The Bonehunters' Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999 - 366 pages
When dinosaur fossils were first discovered in the Wild West, they sparked one of the greatest scientific battles in American history. Over the past century it has been known by many names -- the Bone War, the Fossil Feud -- but the tragic story of the competition for fame and natural treasure between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two leading paleontologists of the Gilded Age, remains prophetic of the conquest of the West as well as a watershed event in science.
With a historian's eye and a novelist's skill, David Rains Wallace charts in fascinating detail the unrestrained rivalry between Cope and Marsh and their obsession to become the first to make available to the world the abundant, unknown fossils of the western badlands. This story will surely fascinate anyone who has had to confront the myriad facets of professional jealousy, its sterile brooding, and how it leads to an emotional abyss.

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Contents

Assassination by Newspaper
1
Prodigy and Heir
11
Stepchild and Laggard
23
Fair Prospects in Dirt
32
Professor Marshs Traveling Bone and Pony Show
46
The Lone Philadelphian
67
Babel at Fort Bridger
77
Marsh the Reformer
92
Behind the Arras
192
Cope Strikes
209
The Herald Steams Ahead
226
Marsh Strikes Back
238
The Herald Steams Away
247
Symmetries and Ironies
255
Death
269
The Skeleton Drummer
287

Cope the Explorer
112
Huxley Anoints Marsh
131
Dinosaurs and Fate
143
An Inside Job
167
The Slippery Slope
178
Squabblers on a Raft
298
Notes
310
Bibliography
340
Index
348
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About the author (1999)

David Rains Wallace is the author of fifteen books, including The Turquoise Dragon, The Quetzal and the Macaw, The Monkey's Bridge (a 1997 New York Times Notable Book), and The Klamath Knot, which won the Burroughs Medal in 1984. He was raised in Connecticut and graduated from Wesleyan College. He now lives in Berkeley, California.

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