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Leg and foot bones of a diplodocus, in situ, where they were discovered at Como Bluff. Remains of the diplodocus were first discovered here in 1878, and the genus was named by Marsh.

Cope was not to be denied, and soon rival camps were eyeing each other suspiciously across the site. There should have been plenty to go round, but stories abound of the depths to which the two men sank. Supposedly, Marsh ordered some dinosaur pits to be dynamited to prevent Cope from acquiring specimens, and later resorted to ‘salting’ Cope’s excavations with random fossils that did not belong there, to obstruct his reconstructions. Cope allegedly responded by having a trainload of Marsh’s findings diverted to Philadelphia. Tensions mounted and on at least one occasion guns were pulled. Wallace describes Como as ‘more like one of the more squalid gold strikes than an instance of exalted scientific discovery.’ He likens the antics of the two protagonists to industrial robber barons: ‘In competing for a natural treasure – the abundant, unknown fossils of the western badlands – they might have been timber barons or mining tycoons.’ Scientific ideals were now secondary; each man became as preoccupied with denying finds to his rival as in making them himself.