Episode 58 - The Bone Wars

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Natural Sciences, Education, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2019

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It was the late 1800s, and paleontology was just getting started in the Americas. Two prolific and passionate scientists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, among the earliest prominent fossil researchers on the continent, struck up a legendary rivalry. Their battles took place in the field and in the literature, and over three decades they engaged in some of the nastiest and most petulant quarreling in scientific history. This infamous era in early paleontology became known as The Bone Wars. In the news: an egg in an ancient bird, a new mastodon, a giant T. rex, and the day the Cretaceous ended. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:05:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:39:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:07:30Patron question: 01:47:30 The Common Descent Store is open! Get merch! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast/PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Muscial Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:21.6	Hello, Internet. And welcome to episode 58 of the Common Descent Podcast.
0:27.6	Yeah. In this episode, we're going back to history, this time specifically paleontological history, which we haven't done very much at all on this podcast,
0:38.5	believe it or not.
0:39.3	Post history, not prehistory.
0:41.0	We are talking about perhaps the most infamous event slash series of events, the most infamous
0:49.2	period of time, maybe in all of paleontology, certainly in Western paleontology, today, folks, we are
0:56.8	talking about the Bone Wars.
1:00.5	A name in an event that are far more dramatic than you would ever expect.
1:06.9	You know, it sounds like the kind of name you would give a scientific debacle to over-hype it.
1:14.2	Yeah, like, oh, they call it the Bone Wars.
1:16.5	This is possibly the most ridiculous series of events in paleontological history.
1:23.8	It's preposterous.
1:25.6	It absolutely had, the name has that feeling of someone going,
1:29.4	all right, but we got to spice it up somehow. Like, we got to give it a good name for the byline.
1:33.9	And no, it is probably way more ridiculous than you could possibly imagine. For the uninitiated,
1:39.4	the Bone Wars are a period of time spanning the better part of three decades in the late
1:44.8	1800s that were marked by a rivalry between two early American paleontologists,
1:52.6	Edward Drinker Cope and Othneill Charles Marsh, who spent that time just feuding, battling
2:00.2	it out in papers, out on dig sites. It's, it's this like
2:06.0	wild west tale. It's full of action and adventure and danger and just the most juvenile
	...

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