Читать книгу Too Big to Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs - Brian Ford J. - Страница 13

It was just when Darwin’s book on evolution was published that America entered the dinosaur race. Fossils were already well known in the U.S.; apart from the ‘Ohio Animal’, innumerable invertebrates had been regularly collected by enthusiasts. A detailed account of animal fossils had been published in the American Journal of Science and Arts as early as 1820.1

The first dinosaur fossils to be found by geologists in North America were discovered in 1854 by Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, a surgeon turned geologist, while he was exploring the Missouri River near its confluence with the Judith River. His team found a few teeth that could not be identified, so they were taken to Joseph Leidy, a knowledgeable geologist who was also Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In 1856 Leidy published a paper that launched North American palæontology, and at the time he was the leading authority on the subject outside of Europe.2

The teeth Hayden had found eventually turned out to represent the remains of three dinosaur genera that were named Trachodon, Troodon and Deinodon. Hayden published his findings two years later, in which he briefly reported discovering teeth that Leidy had found to be from ‘two or three genera of large Saurians allied to the Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, etc’. It was becoming apparent that dinosaurs were not only to be found in the Old World; they were also relics of prehistoric America. This was a startling revelation to science. Hayden went on to lead the first major exploration of Yellowstone in 1871, and it was his report that led to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park.3

The discovery of the first near-complete dinosaur skeleton in the U.S. would revolutionize palæontology and it was announced by a keen amateur naturalist, William Parker Foulke. He was born in Philadelphia in 1816 and came from a Welsh family of Quakers who had emigrated to America in 1698. Foulke was a successful lawyer and became a prominent campaigner for civil rights. He opposed slavery, fought for prison reform, published political pamphlets, and was a prominent philanthropist. He was also an enthusiast for geology and became a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. In 1858, just as the papers by Wallace and Darwin on evolution were being read at the Linnean Society of London and two years after Leidy had confirmed the discovery of dinosaur teeth, Foulke was staying in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and was discussing the lie of the land with John Hopkins, who farmed nearby. Hopkins was in the habit of excavating marl from a tributary of the nearby Cooper River for use as a lime-rich soil dressing. He mentioned to Foulke that, some 20 years before, workmen had dug out some huge black bones. He still had a few at his home. Foulke inquired where they came from, but the farmer tersely explained that the purpose of the work was to acquire lime for the farm, not to provide bones for a philosopher. He had thought no more about them. Foulke asked him if the digging could be resumed, to see if further bones could be found, but when they walked across to see the old digging site it had become overgrown with vegetation and much of the marl outcrop had been eroded. One of the workmen was asked to come to look at the site, but he couldn’t identify where the bones had been found and for a day or two they excavated in the wrong place. Then the worker had a brainwave – changing position, they dug down about 10 feet (3 metres) and suddenly came across a large bone. It was heavily impregnated with iron and was as black as coal. Careful excavation soon revealed the left side of a large skeleton, including 28 vertebræ, much of the pelvis and almost all the four limbs. As is the curious case with many herbivorous dinosaur fossils, there was no sign of a skull. The bones were in fragments, each of which was carefully cleaned, measured and drawn, before they were packed in straw and transported by horse and cart to Foulke’s premises less than a mile away. The skeleton proved to be that of a new type of dinosaur, which was named Hadrosaurus from the Greek ἁδρός (hadros, large) and σαῦρος (sauros, lizard). Analysis of the anatomy showed that, like Iguanodon, it seemed to stand erect and walked on its hindlegs.

Joseph Leidy, who had now become known as the nation’s leading palæontologist, was informed of the discovery by Foulke. As Leidy arrived on site he went with Foulke to the excavation and the digging continued, though nothing else was found. It was Leidy who decided to name the dinosaur Hadrosaurus foulkii to commemorate its discoverer. The skeleton was officially donated to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in December 1858 and 10 years later was put on public display after being meticulously reassembled and mounted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, the man who had designed the concrete dinosaurs for the Crystal Palace. Hawkins opted not to exhibit the original bones, but to prepare plaster casts that were then stained to look like the real thing. In this way, the fossil remained available for scientific study and there could always be more casts made in future. Not only was this America’s first entire dinosaur but it was the first time that any dinosaur skeleton had ever been seen in public anywhere in the world. It was a sensation. Palæontologists, anatomists, zoologists and enthusiasts travelled from far and wide to see the huge display. As the public flocked in to view the spectacular skeleton, the museum staff where soon overwhelmed. So were the exhibits. The thousands of visitors threw up so much dust that other treasures on display were threatened, and the Academy responded at first by limiting the numbers who could attend at any one time. Then they reduced the number of days each week when the exhibit was open; and finally, they began to charge admission to see the skeleton. The museum had been recording some 30,000 people each year, but that number more than doubled when the hadrosaur was put on display, attracting more than 66,000 visitors. The following year, the total topped 100,000 and the administrators launched a public appeal for funding, so that they could obtain premises large enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to come. Nothing like it had ever been experienced before.

William Foulke’s discovery of this Hadrosaurus skeleton in 1858 launched the search for dinosaurs in the United States. When the fossil was reconstructed 10 years later, it became the first dinosaur skeleton to be put on public display.

The money they collected was enough to construct a building that was twice the size, and this is the museum that still stands today at 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It retains much of the original architectural detail, including the galleries with their fin de siècle balustrades and the fine brick and stone façade. This is a museum that has blended modernity with tradition, unlike some others (London’s Natural History Museum being a case in point) where the dinosaur gallery has become a dimly lit children’s theme park. The Philadelphia dinosaur became world-renowned, and it remained the only fossil dinosaur on public exhibition until 1871, when a duplicate plaster copy was erected in Central Park, New York City, as a public attraction. However, the organizers had not reckoned with William Magear Tweed, an influential New York politician. Tweed was a corrupt property developer. Before he was 30, he had been elected to the House of Representatives and, although he never qualified in law, he managed to have himself certified as an attorney and set about extracting protection money from everyone he could. He was appointed to the New York Senate and was repeatedly arrested and freed, sometimes escaping from custody, and was sustained by the support of an adoring public. Tweed became known as ‘Boss’ and was deeply dishonest – he seemed to have a hand in every commercial deal in the city and soon became the third-largest landowner in New York City. Although his proclaimed wealth was largely an invention, he had himself appointed to the board of a railroad company, a major bank, a luxury hotel and a printing company; little commercial development took place in the city in which his corruption did not play a part (some readers may recognize a pattern here that makes America in 2018 seem tame by comparison). ‘Boss’ Tweed took a poor view of the new dinosaur display because he was unable to persuade the proprietors to pay protection money, so he secretly ordered the destruction of the plaster skeleton. No sooner had installation work finished than the entire skeleton was smashed to pieces and thrown into the nearby lake by his henchmen. Thus, the second dinosaur skeleton to go on display anywhere in the world fell victim to big-city corruption. Six years later, another of the casts was shipped to Scotland for display in the National Museum in Edinburgh. Fortunately, it was left unscathed and remains there to this day – the first dinosaur skeleton ever put on public display outside of the United States.4

A cast of the dinosaur skeleton from Haddonfield stood at the heart of the centennial exhibition of scientific and industrial wonders held in 1876 in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, where it shared the stage with the world’s largest steam engine and the torch that had been manufactured in readiness for installation on the Statue of Liberty. Once again, it was a sensation. Two years later, another of the casts was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution, which displayed the world-famous skeleton outside its headquarters. Another cast was bought by Princeton University and displayed in its Nassau Hall. Hadrosaurus foulkii remained the only dinosaur put on public exhibition anywhere in the world until 1883, when a Belgian Iguanodon skeleton went on display in Brussels. This was to correct a mistake Mantell had made when the first fossils were excavated – the horn he had assumed went on the snout was actually situated on the wrist, somewhat like a spiked thumb. Artists using the standard drawings as a reference for their own impressions of dinosaurs took longer to adapt; as we shall see, there was still a horn appearing on the snout of an iguanodon as late as the 1960s.

A problem soon emerged. These skeletons were all installed in an imposing upright position, with the tail resting on the ground, as a standard, terrestrial creature. But over the following decades, as palæontologists considered their findings, it was realized that the upright position was impossible – although innumerable footprints of dinosaurs like this were being discovered, there was never any sign of an impression left by the tail. Clearly, the tail of a dinosaur never touched the ground. And so, since the 1990s, dinosaur skeletons have been reconfigured with the tails held aloft. There are still some in the former, upright stance (there is one example in the State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey, and another in the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge University), but the fossil evidence has proved that this upright stance is impossible. The hadrosaur that Foulkes discovered remains the only one anybody has found. Even though other duck-billed dinosaurs (collectively known as hadrosaurs) have since been found, there are no other specimens of the same strange species that he discovered. Furthermore, nobody knows quite what it looked like, for the skull was never located (the skeleton casts on display in museums use a manufactured skull shaped rather like that of an Iguanodon). The team at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia had made history by displaying this unique discovery. Just as the concrete sculptures of dinosaurs at the Crystal Palace had caught international attention, so had their exhibit of the first skeleton ever put on display.

This was an exciting project, and one of the team, a young zoologist who had been a child prodigy, was destined to become their curator. He was 18 years old when the skeleton arrived at the Academy, and its majesty transfixed him. This teenager was Edward Drinker Cope, and he became one of the greatest dinosaur hunters of all time. Edward was the son of Alfred and Hanna Cope, a wealthy Quaker family who ran a shipping company and had emigrated from Germany. They were resident near Philadelphia when the young Cope was born on July 28, 1840. His mother died when he was 3 years old, and Rebecca Biddle became his stepmother. They looked to the future, and Edward was taught to read and write from an early age. The family made extensive visits to parks, zoological collections and museums, for this was how a youngster was prepared for a full and satisfying life in those days. Some of Edward’s childhood notebooks survive and they show a wide-ranging interest in natural history. He was also a capable artist. At the age of 12, he was sent to boarding school at West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he studied algebra and astronomy, chemistry and physiology, scripture, grammar and Latin. Looking back at those days, we can see that earlier generations had a tradition of learning instilled at an early age – yet Edward Cope would not study subjects he disliked. Penmanship was a lesson he found difficult, and indeed his handwriting throughout his adult life was often illegible. By 1855 he was back at home and became increasingly preoccupied by natural history. He had often been taken to the Academy of Natural Sciences, and by 1858 he was working there as a part-time assistant, cataloguing and classifying specimens in the collections, when Foulkes’ dinosaur skeleton arrived. This sowed a seed that would germinate in Cope’s later years. He was captivated by the prospect of investigating magnificent monsters from long-lost worlds.

Later that year, far younger than you would expect a scientist to start publishing, Cope’s first paper appeared. It was on salamanders. Meanwhile, his father was not convinced that a life in the museum world was appropriate, and he believed that agriculture would be more suitable, so he purchased a farm for the young Cope. With considerable enterprise, Edward decided to rent out the property to a tenant farmer and he used the regular income to support him in his private interests. In 1860 he enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, but he found their approach too pedestrian so he did not stay to graduate. (I have to admit that I had a similar experience at Cardiff University; settling down to study a syllabus with which I was already familiar did not appeal to me either, when there was a great wide world awaiting discovery.) Cope always kept the admission slip for the academic year 1861–1862, and – since these forms were always collected on the first day of the academic year – we can assume that he left university late in 1861. One of his teachers of comparative anatomy was Joseph Leidy, and it was he who encouraged the young Cope to join the staff of the Academy. Because of his position in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Cope was able to join the American Philosophical Society, and it was this august body that provided him with an outlet for many of his pioneering papers on palæontology.

Edward Drinker Cope (left), born in Philadelphia in 1840, followed Lamarck’s theory of acquired characteristics. In a 22-year period he discovered more than 1,000 new fossil species, including 56 new dinosaurs. The co-star of the ‘bone wars’ of late nineteenth-century America was Othniel Charles Marsh (right), born in 1831 in Lockport, NY. He discovered about 500 new fossil species, including 80 dinosaurs. There was much bitter rivalry between Marsh and Cope.

Two years later, the American Civil War erupted, and, to avoid the draft, Cope quit America for Europe. He travelled to England, France, Germany, Ireland, Austria and Italy, taking full advantage of the time to visit seats of learning, museums, and some of the distinguished scientists of the day. But he was unhappy for much of the time, and became depressed. He even set fire to his voluminous diaries and papers until he was prevailed upon by friends to keep some intact – but most of his early documents were lost. Cope was cheered by a visit to Berlin in 1863, where he met a fellow enthusiast who was equally fascinated by fossils. The two frequently went out together and soon became friends. This new acquaintance was Othniel Charles Marsh, who, at 32, was 9 years his senior. They were contrasting young men: whereas Cope lacked formal education after school, Marsh held two university degrees. While the eager Cope had published some 37 scientific papers, Marsh still had only two published papers to his name. Marsh took Cope out to explore the city and its museums, and the two became confidants. As they parted they agreed to correspond, and to exchange specimens. Both seemed destined for greatness. Palæontology was blossoming, and a new world awaited them.

Back in Philadelphia as the Civil War was ending, Cope’s father arranged for him to secure a teaching post at Haverford College, a private school with which the family was associated. Cope was still unqualified, so the college awarded him an honorary degree. He married a young Quaker named Annie Pim, aiming less at a romantic liaison than a practical arrangement. He was less interested in poetic passion than in the ability to manage a household, he told his father. They were married in 1865 and next year had a daughter, Julia Biddle Cope. Edward Cope continued to publish papers on anatomy, and also wrote his first paper on palæontology – it described a small carboniferous amphibian fossil Amphibamus grandiceps from Grundy County, Illinois, which he said was ‘discovered in a bed belonging to the lower part of the coal measures … imbedded in a concretion of brown limestone.’5

Cope travelled extensively in the U.S., always searching for specimens, and – although he enjoyed teaching – he complained that he had no time for his serious studies. The work on the Hadrosaurus skeleton continued to captivate him, so he sold the farm that his father had given him and moved to Haddonfield, which is where Foulke had found the fossil. Cope now started digging in the marl beds and was soon rewarded by a spectacular find. He unearthed the remains of a new dinosaur that measured 25 feet (8 metres) in length and could have weighed about 2 tons in life. He named it Laelaps aquilunguis but later discovered that the genus Laelaps had already been assigned to a small mite, so the name was changed. Today we know it as Dryptosaurus aquilunguis. He also obtained a fossil that had been discovered in Kansas and excavated by a military surgeon, Theophilus Turner. This was a 30-foot (10-metre) plesiosaur weighing about 4 tons and named Elasmosaurus platyurus. He described it as having an elongated tail and a short neck, and, always rushing to publish, he prepared an illustration that showed his newly discovered dinosaur perched on a sandbank as plesiosaurs frolicked in the nearby water.

Cope placed the skull on the tail end of an elasmosaur in the foreground of this illustration published in American Naturalist in 1869. Once Marsh had pointed out this mistake, Cope tried to have every incorrect version destroyed.

The family lived comfortably and entertained house guests. Cope was a man of enormous energy and boundless enthusiasm. Henry Weed Fowler, a zoologist friend, said he was ‘of medium height and build, but always impressive with his great energy and activity.’ Cope was a friendly and open character, and people found him approachable and kind. If a passing youngster drifted from the street into the museum where he was at work, Cope would chat animatedly about the work he was doing. Many modern accounts portray him as an avuncular and warm individual with high moral values and integrity, though some of his associates recorded that his language was foul, he had a bad temper that erupted without warning – and he was a habitual womanizer. A one-time friend, the artist Charles R. Knight, claimed that: ‘In his heyday, no woman was safe within five miles of him.’ In an era of machismo, some colleagues even admired this in Cope. One American palæontologist, Alfred Romer, commented that: ‘His little slips from virtue were those we might make ourselves, were we bolder.’ If Cope was anything, he was bold.6