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Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh both came from money but their backgrounds and education were subtly different. Cope came from a genteel Quaker background and was schooled in the liberal tradition of a bygone age, touring the academic institutions of Europe during the Civil War. Marsh was older but began his schooling and career later, only beginning in earnest when his rich uncle George Peabody started to fund him; his education was more conventional and his career would later reflect this.

The two men had conflicting personalities and personalities suited to conflict. Marsh was not a naturally social creature; a college acquaintance observed that: ‘for most people it was “like running against a pitchfork to get acquainted with him”.’ Meanwhile an acquaintance of Cope’s, palaeontologist E.C. Case, wrote of him: ‘he was essentially a fighting man, expressing his energy in encountering mental, rather than physical difficulties ... He met honest opposition with a vigour honouring his foe, but fraternized cordially after the battle.’

The two men met for the first time in 1863. David Rains Wallace, author of the key text on the feud, The Bonehunters’ Revenge, suggests that even then they probably ‘felt a nascent rivalry ... Their disparate backgrounds predisposed them to look down, subtly, on each other. The patrician Edward may have considered Marsh not quite a gentleman. The academic Othniel probably regarded Cope as not quite a professional.’ Cope’s freewheeling, individualist style contrasted with what Wallace calls the ‘calm, methodical careerism’ of Marsh, who quickly scaled the greasy pole of the scientific establishment.

‘Professor Marsh’s Primeval Troupe’ A cartoon from Punch, 1890, showing Othniel Charles Marsh’s ‘perfect mastery over the ceratopsidae’. Surveying his finds, prolific American fossil hunter Marsh stands astride the skull of a triceratops, considering two reconstructions he would have supervised – or at least claimed credit for.