Edward Drinker Cope
Born	July 28, 1840(1840-07-28) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Died	April 12, 1897 (aged 56) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Fields	Paleontology, zoology, herpetology
Religious stance	Quaker

Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen. Though his father tried to raise Cope as a gentleman farmer, he eventually acquiesced to his son's scientific aspirations. Cope married his cousin and had one child; the family moved from Philadelphia to Haddonfield, New Jersey, although Cope would maintain a residence and museum in Philadelphia in his later years.

Cope had little formal scientific training, and eschewed a teaching position for field work. He made regular trips to the American West prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s, often as part of United States Geological Survey teams. A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competition now known as the Bone Wars. Cope's financial fortunes soured after failed mining ventures in the 1880s, and was forced to sell off much of his fossil collection. He experienced a resurgence in his career towards the end of his life. Cope died of unidentified causes on April 12, 1897.

Cope's scientific pursuits nearly bankrupted him, but his contributions helped define the field of American paleontology; he was a prodigious writer, with 1,400 papers published over his lifetime, although his rivals would debate the accuracy of his rapidly published works. He discovered, described, and named more than 1,000 vertebrate species including hundreds of fishes and dozens of dinosaurs. His theories on the origin of mammalian molars and "Cope's Law", on the gradual enlargement of mammalian species, are among his theoretical contributions.

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Cope was taken on a sea trip to Boston one week after his seventh birthday. His notebook, including this page, survives and contains copious notes and drawings of his travels.^[1]

Edward Drinker Cope was born on July 28, 1840, the eldest son of Alfred and Hanna Cope.^[2] The death of his mother at the age of three seemed to have little effect on young Edward, as he mentioned in his letters that he had no recollection of her. His stepmother Rebecca Biddle filled the motherly role; Cope referred to her warmly, as well as his younger stepbrother, James Biddle Cope. Alfred, an orthodox Quaker, operated a lucrative shipping business started by his father Thomas P. Cope in 1821. Alfred was also a philanthropist who gave money to the Society of Friends, the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens and the Institute for Colored Youth.^[3]

Edward was born and raised in a large stone house called "Fairfield", in what is now suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.^[2] The 8 acres (32,000 m²) of pristine and exotic gardens of the house offered a natural landscape that Edward was able to explore.^[4] The Copes began teaching their children to read and write at a very young age, and took Edward on trips across New England and to museums, zoos, and gardens. Cope's interest in animals became apparent at a young age, as did his natural artistic ability.^[1]

Alfred intended to give his son the same education that he himself was brought up in.^[5] At nine, Edward was sent to a day school in Philadelphia and in 1853 at the age of twelve, Edward was sent to the Friends' Boarding School or Westtown, near West Chester, Pennsylvania.^[6] The school was founded in 1799 with fundraising by members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), as was the site of much of the Cope family's education.^[5] The prestigious school was expensive, costing Alfred $500 tuition each year, and in his first year Edward studied Algebra, Chemistry, Scripture, Physiology, Grammar, Astronomy, and Latin.^[7] Edward's letters home requesting a larger allowance show he was able to manipulate his father, and that he was, according to author and Cope biographer Jane Davidson, "a bit of a spoiled brat".^[8] His letters also suggest that he was lonely at the school—it was the first time he had been away from his home for an extended period of time. Otherwise, Cope's studies progressed much like a typical boy—he consistently had "less than perfect" or "not quite satisfactory" marks for conduct from his teachers, and did not work hard on his penmanship lessons, which may have contributed to his often illegible handwriting as an adult.^[7]

Despite complaints about his schooling, Cope returned to Westtown in 1855, accompanied by two of his sisters. Biology began to interest him more, and he studied natural history texts in his spare time. While at the prestigious school Cope frequently visited the Academy of Natural Sciences. Cope frequently obtained bad marks for quarrelsome and bad conduct. His letters to his father show that he chafed at farm work and betrayed flashes of the temper he would later become well known for.^[9] After sending Edward back to the farm for summer break in 1854 and 1855, Alfred did not return Edward to school after spring 1856. Instead Alfred attempted to turn his son into a gentleman farmer, a wholesome profession that would yield enough profit to lead a comfortable life,^[10] as well as a way of improving the undersized Cope's health.^{[11][n 1]} Up till 1863, Cope's letters to his father continually expressed his yearning for a more professional scientific career than that of a farmer, which he called "dreadfully boring".^[10]

While working on farms, Edward continued his education on his own.^[12] In 1858 he began working part-time at the Academy of Natural Sciences, reclassifying and cataloguing specimens, and published his first series of research results in January 1859. Cope also began taking French and German classes with a former Westtown teacher. Though Alfred resisted his son's acceptance of a science career, he paid for his son's private studies.^[12] Instead of working the farm his father bought for him, Edward rented out the land and used the income to further his scientific exploits.^[13]

Alfred finally gave in to Edward's wishes and paid for university classes. Cope attended the University of Pennsylvania in the 1861 and/or 1862 academic years,^{[14][n 2]} studying comparative anatomy under Joseph Leidy, one of the most influential anatomists and paleontologists at the time.^[15] Cope also asked his father to pay for a tutor in both German and French, "not so much for their own sake," wrote Edward, "but as for their value in enabling me to read their books of a literary or scientific character."^[16] He also had a job during this period recataloging the herpetological collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences, in which he became a member at Leidy's urging.^[17] Edward's job lasted two years and he visited the Smithsonian Institution on occasion, where he became acquainted with Spencer Baird, who was an expert in the fields of ornithology and ichthyology.^[18] Cope's membership in the Academy of Natural Sciences and American Philosophical Society gave him outlets to publish and announce his work; many of his early paleontological works were published by the Philosophical Society.^[19]

[edit] European travels

In 1863-1864, Edward traveled through Europe, taking the opportunity to visit the most esteemed museums and societies of the time. Initially, Edward seemed interested in helping out at a field hospital, but in letters to his father later on in the war this aspiration seemed to have disappeared; instead Edward considered working in the South to assist freed African-Americans. Davidson suggests that Edward's correspondence with Leidy and Ferdinand Hayden, who worked as field surgeons during the war, might have clued Edward into the horrors of the work.^[20] He was also involved in a love affair that his farther did not approve of.^[21] Whether Edward or the unnamed woman (whom at one point Cope intended to marry) broke off the relationship is unknown, but regardless he took the breakup poorly.^[22]

Many of Edward's journals and letters from the time period do not exist, for he burned them upon his return from his European travels. Biographer and paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn attributes Edward's sudden departure for Europe as a method of keeping him from being drafted into the American Civil War.^[23] Cope did write to his father from London on February 11, 1864 that, "I shall get home in time to catch and be caught by the new draft. I shall not be sorry for this, as I know certain persons who would be mean enough to say that I have gone to Europe to avoid the war."^[24] Eventually Cope decided took the pragmatic approach and waited out the conflict.^[20] Friends intervened and stopped Cope from destroying some of his drawings and notes, which author Url Lanham deemed a "partial suicide".^[25] He may have suffered from depression during this period, and often complained of boredom.^[22]

Despite his torpor, Edward proceeded with his tour of Europe, and met with some of the most highly esteemed scientists of the world during his travels through France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Italy, and Eastern Europe, most likely with introductory letters from Joseph Leidy and Spencer Baird.^[26] In the winter of 1863, Edward met Othniel Charles Marsh while in Berlin, Germany. Marsh, age thirty-two, was attending the University of Berlin. Though Marsh had two university degrees in comparison to Edward's lack of formal schooling past sixteen, Edward at the age of twenty-three had published 37 scientific papers in comparison to Marsh's two published works.^[27] The two men appeared to take a liking to each other; Marsh led Edward on a tour of the city, and they stayed together for days. After Edward left Berlin the two maintained correspondence, exchanging manuscripts, fossils, and photographs.^[27]

[edit] Family and early career

Upon returning to Philadelphia in 1864 the Cope family made every effort to secure Edward a teaching post as the Professor of Zoology at Haverford College, a small Quaker school that the family had philanthropic ties.^[28] The college awarded him an honorary master's degree so he could have the position. Cope even began to think about marriage and consulted his father in the matter, telling him of the girl he would like to marry, "an amiable woman, not over sensitive, with considerable energy, and especially one inclined to be serious and not inclined to frivolity and display—the more truly christian of course the better—seems to be the most practically the most suitable for me, though intellect and accomplishments have more charm."^[28] Cope thought of Annie Pim, a member of the Society of Friends, as less a lover and was more inclined towards what he described as "her amiability and domestic qualities generally, her capability of taking care of a house, etc., as well as her steady seriousness weigh far more with me than any of the traits which form the theme of poets!" Cope's family approved of his choice, and the marriage took place in July 1865 at Pim’s farmhouse in Chester County, Pennsylvania.^[29] The two had a single daughter, Julia Biddle Cope, born June 10, 1866.^[30]

During the time period of 1866–1867 Cope went on trips to the eastern United States and later to the western part of the country.^[30][31] Cope related to his father alone his scientific experiences; to his daughter he sent descriptions of animal life as part of her education. Cope found educating his students at Haverford "a pleasure," but wrote his father that he "could not get any work done."^[30][32] He resigned from his position at Haverford and moved his family to Haddonfield, in part to be closer to the fossil beds of western New Jersey. Due to the time-consuming nature of his Haverford position Cope had not had time to attend to his farm and had let it out to others, but eventually found he was in need of more money to fuel his scientific habits.^[33] Pleading with his father for money to pursue his career, he finally sold the farm in 1869.^[34] Alfred appeared not to press his son to continue to be a farmer, and Cope focused on his scientific career.^[35] He continued his continental travels, including trips to Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.^[36] He visited caves across the region. He stopped these cave explorations after an 1871 trip to the Wyandotte Caves in Indiana, but remained interested in the subject.^[37] Cope had visited Haddonfield many times in the 1860s, paying periodical visits to the marl pits. The fossils he found in these pits became the focus of several papers, including a descriptions in 1868 of Elasmosaurus platyurus, Elanliosaur and Laelaps. Marsh accompanied him on one of these excursions. Cope's proximity to the beds after moving to Haddonfield made more frequent trips possible. The Copes lived comfortably in a frame house backed by an apple orchard. Two maids tended the estate, which entertained a number of guests. Cope's only concern was for more money to spend on his scientific work.^[38]

Cope's Pine Street residence

In the autumn of 1871 Cope headed farther west to the fossil fields of Kansas. Leidy and Cope had been to the region earlier, and Cope employed one of Marsh's guides, Benjamin Mudge, who was in want of a job.^[39] Cope's companion Charles Sternberg described the lack of water and good food available to Cope and his helpers on these expeditions; Cope himself would suffer from a "severe attack of nightmare" in which "every animal of which we had found trace during the day played with him at night [...] sometimes he would lose half the night in this exhausting slumber." Nevertheless Cope continued to lead the party from sunrise to sunset, sending letters to his wife and child describing his finds.^[40] However, the severe desert conditions and Cope’s habit of overworking himself till he was bedridden caught up with him and in 1872 he broke down from exhaustion.^[41] Returning from summers of field work, Cope wrote up his findings during the winter months; he maintained this pattern from 1871-1879.^[42]

The 1870s were the golden years of Cope’s career, marked by his most prominent discoveries and most rapid flow of publications. In the period of one year, from 1879-1880, he published 76 papers based on his travels through New Mexico and Colorado, and on the findings of his collectors in Texas, Kansas Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.^[43] During the peak years, Cope published on average 25 reports and preliminary observations each year. The hurried publications lead to errors in interpretation and naming—many of his scientific names were subsequently canceled or withdrawn. In comparison, Marsh wrote and published less frequently and more succinctly—their appearance in the widespread American Journal of Science led to faster reception abroad and subsequently Marsh's reputations grew faster than Cope.^[44]

Throughout the decade Cope travelled across the West, exploring rocks of the Eocene in 1872 and the Titanothere Beds of Colorado in 1873.^[45][46] In 1874 Cope was employed with the Wheeler Survey, a group of surveys led by George Montague Wheeler that mapped parts of the United States west of the 100th meridian. The survey traveled through New Mexico, whose Puerco formations, he wrote to his father, provided "the most important find in geology I have ever made".^[47] The New Mexico bluffs contained millions of years of formation and subsequent deformation. It was an area which had not been visited by either Leidy or Marsh. Being part of the survey had other advantages; Cope was able to draw on fort commissaries and defray the costs of publishing; while there was no salary, his findings would published in the annual reports that the surveys printed. Cope did bring Annie and Julia along on one such survey and rented a house for them at Fort Bridger, but he inherently spent more of his own money on these survey trips than he would have liked.^[48]

In 1875 Alfred died and left Edward with an inheritance of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Alfred's death was a blow to Cope; his father was a constant confidant. The same year marked a suspension of much of Cope's field work and a new emphasis on writing up discoveries of the previous years. His chief publication of the time, Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West, was a collection of 303 pages and 54 illustration plates. The memoir summarized his experiences prospecting in New Jersey and Kansas.^[49] Cope now had the finances to hire multiple teams to search for fossils for him year-round and in 1876 he advised the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition on their fossil displays. 1876 also marked the close of Cope's studies of marine reptiles of Kansas and a new focus on terrestrial reptiles.^[50] The same year, Cope moved from Haddonfield to 2100 and 2102 Pine Street in Philadelphia. He converted one of the two houses into a museum where he stored his growing collection of fossils.^[42] Cope's expeditions took him across Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana. Copes initial journey into the Clarendon Beds of Upper Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Texas led to an affiliation with the Geological Survey of Texas. Cope's papers on the region constituted some of his most important paleontological contributions.^[51] In 1877 he purchased half the rights to the American Naturalist in order to publish the papers he was churning out at a rate so high that Marsh questioned their dating.^[52]

Cope returned to Europe in August 1878 in response to an invitation to join the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Dublin meeting. He was warmly welcomed in England and France and met with the distinguished paleontologists and archeologists of the period. Marsh's attempts to damage Cope's reputation had made little impact on anyone save Thomas Henry Huxley, whom according to Osborn "alone treated [Cope] with coolness".^[53] Following the Dublin meeting, Cope spent two days with the French Association for the Advancement of Science. At each gathering Cope exhibited dinosaur restorations by Philadelphia colleague John A. Ryder and various charts and plates from the 1870s geological surveys led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. He returned to London on October 12, meeting with anatomist Richard Owen, ichthyologist Hermann Gunther and paleontologist H. G. Seeley. While in Europe Cope purchased a great collection of fossils from Argentina. Cope never found time to describe the collection; many of the boxes remained unopened until Cope's death.^[54]

[edit] Bone Wars

Charles R. Knight's 1909 reconstruction of Elasmosaurus; Cope had mistakenly constructed the creature with a short neck and long tail.

Cope's relations with Marsh turned into a competition for bones between the two, known today as the Bone Wars. The conflict's seeds began upon the men's return to the United States in the 1860s. When the two visited the marl pits, Cope introduced his colleague to the pit owner, Albert Vorhees. Marsh went Cope's back and made a private agreement with Vorhees: any fossils that Vorhees's men found were back to Marsh at New Haven.^[55] When Marsh was at Haddonfield examining one of Cope’s fossil finds—a complete skeleton of a large aquatic plesiosaur, Elasmosaurus, that had four flippers and a long neck—he commented that the fossil's head was on the wrong end, evidently stating that Cope had put the skull at the end of the vertebra of the tail. Cope was outraged and the two argued for some time until they agreed to have Joseph Leidy examine the bones and judge who was right. Leidy came, simply picked up the head of the fossil and put it on the other end. Cope was horrified since he had already published a paper on the fossil with the error at the American Philosophical Society. He immediately tried to buy back the copies, but some remained with their buyers (Marsh kept his, as did Leidy).^[56] The whole ordeal might have passed easily enough had Leidy not exposed the cover up at the next society meeting, not to in any way alienate Cope but only in response to Cope's brief statement where he never admitted he was wrong. Cope and Marsh would never talk to each other amicably again, and by 1873 open hostility had broken out between them.^[57]

The two's rivalry increased towards the latter half of the 1870s. In 1877, Marsh received a letter from Arthur Lakes, a schoolteacher in Golden, Colorado. Lakes had been hiking in the mountains near the town of Morrison with his friend, H. C. Beckwith, looking for fossilized leaves in the Dakota sandstone. Instead the pair found large bones embedded in the rock.^[58] Lakes wroted that the bones were "apparently a vertebra and a humerus bone of some gigantic saurian."^[59] While Lakes sent Marsh some 1,500 pounds of bone, he also sent Cope some of his found specimens. Marsh published his finds first, and having been paid $100 for the finds Lakes wrote to Cope that the samples should be forwarded to Marsh.^[60] Cope was offended by the slight.^[61] Meanwhile Cope would receive bones from school superintendent O.W. Lucas in March 1877 from Canon City; the remains were of a dinosaur even bigger than Lakes' that Marsh had described.^[60]

Word that Lakes had notified Cope of his finds galvanized Marsh into action. When Marsh heard from Union Pacific Railroad workers W.E. Carlin and W.H. Reed about a vast boneyard northwest of Laramie in Como Bluff, Marsh sent his agent, Samuel Wendell Williston, to take charge of the digging.^[62] Cope, in response, learned of Carlin and Reed's discoveries and sent his own men to find bones in the area.^[63] The two scientists attempted to sabotage each other's progress. Cope was described as a genius and what Marsh lacked in intelligence, he easily made up for in connections—Marsh's uncle was George Peabody, a rich banker who supported Marsh with money, and a secure position at the Peabody Museum. Marsh lobbied John Wesley Powell to act against Cope and attempted to persuade Hayden to "muzzle" Cope’s publishing.^[64] Both men tried their hardest to spy on the other’s whereabouts and attempted to offer their collectors more money in the hopes of recruiting them to their own side. Cope was able to recruit David Baldwin in New Mexico and Frank Williston in Wyoming from Marsh.^[65] Cope and Marsh were extremely secretive as to the source of the fossils. When Osborn, at the time a student at Princeton, visited Cope to ask where to travel to look for fossils in the West, Cope politely refused.^[66]

When Cope arrived back in the United States after his tour of Europe in 1878, he had nearly two years of fossil findings from Lucas. Among these dinosaurs was Camarasaurus, today one of the most recognizable dinosaur recreations of this time period.^[67] The summer of 1879 took Cope to Salt Lake City, San Francisco and north to Oregon, where he was amazed at the rich flora and the blueness of the Pacific Ocean.^[68] In 1879 the United States Congress consolidated the various government survey teams into the United States Geological Survey with Clarence King as its leader. This was discouraging to Cope because King immediately named Marsh, an old college friend, as the chief paleontologist. Cope's paleontological digs in the American West lasted from 1877 to 1892.^[63]

[edit] Later years

Illustration plate from Cope's The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the Far West, featuring the skulls of Canidae from the "John Day Epoch" in Oregon

The 1880s proved disastrous for Cope.^[69] Marsh's close association with the Geological Survey gave him the resources to employ a total of 54 staff members over the course of ten years. His position at Yale meant he had guaranteed access to the American Journal of Science for publication. Cope had his interest in the Naturalist, but it drained him of funds. After Hayden was removed from the Survey, Cope lost his source of government funding. His fortune alone was not enough to support his rivalry, so Cope invested in silver and gold mining. Most of his properties were silver mines in New Mexico. One such mine yielded an ore vein worth $3 million of silver chloride. Cope visited the mines each summer from 1881 to 1885, taking the opportunity to supervise or collect other minerals.^[70] For a while he made good money, but the mines stopped producing and by 1886 had to give up his now-worthless stocks.^[71] He continued to travel west, but realized he would not be able to best Marsh in cornering the market for bones; he had to release the collectors he had hired and sell his collections. During this period he published 40 to 75 papers each year.^[72] With the failure of his mines, Cope began searching for a job, but was turned down at the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History. He turned to giving lectures for hire and writing magazine articles. Each year he lobbied Congress for an appropriation with which to finish his work on "Cope's Bible", but was continually turned down. Rather than work with Powell and the Survey, Cope instead tried to inflame sentiment against them.^[73]

At Marsh's urging, Powell pushed for Cope to give back the specimens that he had unearthed during his employment under the government surveys. This was an outrage to Cope, who had used his own money while working as a volunteer with the survey teams.^[74] In response, Cope went to the editor of the New York Herald and promised a scandalous headline. Since 1885,^[75] Cope had kept an elaborate journal of mistakes and misdeeds that both Marsh and Powell had committed over the years. From scientific errors to publishing mistakes, he had them written down in a journal that he kept in the bottom drawer of his Pine Street desk.^[76] Cope had sought out Marsh's assistants, who complained of being denied access and credit by their employer and of being chronically underpaid.^[77] Reporter William Hosea Ballou ran the first article on January 12, 1890, in what would become a series of newspaper debates between Marsh, Powell and Cope.^[78] Cope attacked Marsh for plagiarism and financial mismanagement and attacked Powell for his geological classification errors and misspending of government allocated funds.^[79] Marsh and Powell each published their own side of the story and, in the end, little changed. No congressional hearing was created to investigate the misallocation of funds by Powell and neither Cope nor Marsh was held responsible for any of their mistakes. Marsh, however, was removed from his position as paleontologist for the government surveys. Cope’s relations with the president of the University of Pennsylvania soured, and the entire funding for paleontology in the government surveys was pulled.^[80]

Cope took his sinking fortunes in stride.^[69] In writing to Osborn about the articles, he laughed at the outcome, saying, "It will now rest largely with you whether or not I am supposed to be a liar and am actuated by jealousy and disappointment. I think Marsh is impaled on the horns of Monoclonius sphenocerus."^[81] Cope was well aware of his enemies and was carefree enough to name a species after a combination of "Cope" and "hater", Anisonchus cophater.^[82] Through his years of financial hardship he was still able to continue publishing papers—his most productive years were 1884 and 1885, with 79 and 62 papers published, respectively—and in 1889 received a position at the University of Pennsylvania as professor of zoology, succeeding Leidy, who had died the previous year.^[83] The small yearly stipend was enough for Cope's family to move back into one of the townhouses he had been forced to relinquish earlier.^[84]

In 1892, Cope (then 52 years old) was granted expense money for field work from the Texas Geological Survey.^[84] With his finances improved, he was able to publish a massive work on the Batrachians of North America, which was the most detailed analysis and organization of the continent's frogs and amphibians ever mastered,^[85] and then the 1,115-page The Crocodilians Lizards and Snakes of North America. In the 1890s his publication rate went back up to an average of 43 articles a year.^[85] His final expedition to the West took place in 1894, when he prospected for dinosaurs in South Dakota and visited sights in Texas and Oklahoma.^[86] The same year, Julia was married to William H. Collins, a Haverford astronomy professor. The couple's ages—Julia was 28 and the groom 35—were past the conventions of Victorian marriage. After their European honeymoon, the couple returned to Haverford. While Annie moved to Haverford as well, Cope did not. His official reason was the long commute and late lectures he gave in Philadelphia. In private correspondence, however, Osborn wrote that the two had essentially separated,^[87] though they remained on amiable terms.^[88]

Cope sold his collections to the American Museum of Natural History in 1895; his collection of 10,000 American fossil mammals^[89] sold for $32,000, lower than Cope's asking price of $50,000. The purchase was financed by the donations from New York's high society.^[90] Cope also sold three other collections for $29,000. While his collection contained more than 13,000 specimens, Cope's fossil hoard was still much smaller than Marsh's collection, valued at over a million dollars.^[86] The University of Pennslyvania bought part of Cope's ethnological artifact collection for $5,500. The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia's foremost museum, did not bid on any of Cope's sales due to bad blood between Cope and the museum's leaders; as a result, most of Cope's major finds left the city.^[90] Cope's proceeds from the sales allowed him to hire Sternberg to prospect for fossils on his behalf.^[91]

[edit] Death

Cope's cluttered study in 1897

In 1896 Cope began suffering from an gastrointestinal illness he called cystitis.^[92] His wife cared for him when she herself was not ill; at other times, Cope's university secretary, Anna Brown, tended to him. Cope at this time lived in his Pine Street museum, and rested on a cot surrounded by his fossil finds. Cope often self-prescribed medication, including large amounts of morphine, belladonna, and formalin, a substance based on formaldehyde used to preserve specimens. Osborn was horrified by Cope's actions and made arrangements for surgery, but the plans were put on hold after a temporary improvement in Cope's health. Cope went to Virginia looking for fossils, became ill again, and returned very weak to his home.^[93] Osborn visited Cope on April 5, inquiring about Cope's health, but the sick paleontologist pressed his friend for his views on the origin of mammals. Word of Cope's illness spread, and he was visited by friends and colleagues; even in a feverish condition Cope delivered lectures from his bed. Cope died on April 12 1897, sixteen weeks short of his 57th birthday.^[94]

Sternberg, still prospecting for Cope that spring, was woken by a liveryman, who relayed a message from Annie that Cope had died three days earlier. Sternberg wrote in his memoirs that "I had lost friends before, and I had known what it was to bury my own dead, even my firstborn son, but I had never sorrowed more deeply than I did over the news."^[94] Cope's Quaker funeral consisted of six men: Osborn, his fellow colleague William Berryman Scott, Cope's friend Persifor Frazer, son-in-law Collins, Horatio Wood and Harrison Allen. The six sat around Cope's coffin among the fossils and Cope's pets, a tortoise and gila monster, for what Osborn called "a perfect Quaker silence [...] an interminable length of time."^[93][94] Anticipating the quiet, Osborn had brought along a Bible and read an excerpt from the Book of Job, ending by saying, "These are the problems to which our friend devoted his life."^[95]

The coffin was loaded on a hearse and carried to a gathering at Fairfield; like at Pine Street, much of the gathering was spent in silence. After the coffin was removed, the assembled began talking. Frazer recalled that each person remembered Cope differently, and that "Few men succeeded so well in concealing from anyone [...] all the sides of his multiform character."^[95] Osborn, intending to follow the coffin to the graveyard, was instead pulled to the side by Collins and taken to the reading of Cope's will—Osborn and Cope's brother-in-law John Garrett were named executors. Cope gave his family a choice of his books, with the remainder to be sold or donated to the University of Pennsylvania. After debts were handled, Cope left small bequests to friends and family—Anna Brown and Julia received $5000 each, while the remainder went to Annie. Cope's entire estate was valued at $75,326.95, not including additional revenue raised by fossil sales to the American Museum of Natural History for a grand total of $84,600.^[96] Some specimens preserved in alcohol made their way to the Academy of Natural Sciences, including a few gordian worms.^[97]

Cope insisted through his will that there be no graveside service or burial; he had donated his body to science. He issued a final challenge to Marsh at his death: he had his skull donated to science so that his brain could be measured, hoping that his brain would be larger than that of his adversary; at the time, it was thought brain size was the true measure of intelligence. Marsh never accepted the challenge, and Cope's skull is reportedly still preserved at the University of Pennsylvania.^[98][99] His ashes were placed at the institute with his friends Joseph Leidy and Dr. Ryder. His bones were extracted and kept in a locked drawer to be studied by anatomy students at the University.^{[100][n 3]}

Osborn listed Cope's cause of death as uremic poisoning, combined with a large prostate, but his true cause of death is unknown.^[94] Many believed Cope had died of syphilis that he contracted in his travels from the women he fraternized with. In 1995 Davidson gained permission to have the skeleton examined by a medical doctor at the university. Dr. Morrie Kricun, a professor of radiology, came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no evidence of bony syphilis on Cope’s skeleton.^[101]

Public mentions of Cope's passing were relatively slight. The Naturalist ran four photographs, a six page obituary by editor J.S. Kingsley, and a two page memorium by Frazer. The National Academy of Sciences' official memoir was submitted years later and written by Osborn. The American Journal of Science devoted six paragraphs to Cope's passing, and incorrectly gave his age as 46. Cope was survived by Marsh, who himself was now graying and suffering from circulatory issues.^[102]

[edit] Theories and legacy

Julia later assisted Osborn in writing a biography of her father, titled Cope: Master Naturalist. She would not comment on the name of the woman with whom her father had had an affair with prior to his first European travel. It is believed that Julia burned any of the scandalous letters and journals that Cope had kept but many of his friends were able to give their recollections of the scandalous nature of some of Cope’s unpublished routines. Charles R. Knight, a former friend called, "Cope’s mouth the filthiest, from hearsay that in his heyday [Copes’s] no woman was safe within five miles of him."^[103] As Julia was the major financier behind The Master Naturalist, she therefore wanted to keep her father’s name in good standing and refused to comment on any misdeeds her father may have committed.^[103]

His views on human evolution would today be considered racist, but at the time were used by scientists as an excuse for imperialism. He believed that if, "a race was not white then it was inherently more ape-like."^[104] He was not opposed to blacks because of the color of their skin but to their "degrading vices," believing that the "inferior Negro should go back to Africa."^[105] He did not blame blacks for their perceived "poor virtue", but wrote that, "A vulture will always eat carrion when surrounded on all hands by every kind of cleaner food. It is the nature of the bird."^[106] Cope was against the modern view of women's rights, believing in the husband’s role as protector. He published papers on the marriage problem, noting that women were physically inferior to men because they did not have the jobs that required them to have muscles. However he believed in education for women and people of all races, in order to make oneself a better individual and to better contribute to society.

Cope was raised as a Quaker, and was taught that the Bible was literal truth. Though he never confronted his family about their religious views, Osborn writes that Cope was at least aware of the conflict between his scientific career and his religion. Osborn writes: "If Edward harbored intellectual doubts about the literalness of the Bible ... he did not express them in his letters to his family but there can be little question ... that he shared the intellectual unrest of the period."^[107] Lanham writes that Cope's religious fervor (which seems to have subsided after his father's death) was embarrassing to even his devout Quaker associates.^[108] Biographer Jane Davidson believes that Osborn seems to have overstated Cope's internal religious conflicts. She ascribes Cope's deference to his father's beliefs as an act of respect or a measure to retain his father's financial support.^[109] Frazer's reminiscences about his friend suggest that Cope often told people what they wanted to hear rather, rather than Cope's true views.^[20]

Cope was a staunch Neo-Lamarckian, believing individuals can pass on traits acquired in its lifetime to offspring.^[110] Though the view has been shown incorrect, it was the prevalent theory among paleontologists in Cope's time.^[108] As a young man, he read Charles Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist, which had little effect on him. The only comment about Darwin's book recorded by Cope was that Darwin discussed "too much geology" from the account of his voyage.^[111] In 1887, Cope published his own "Origin of the Fittest: Essays in Evolution".^[112] Cope was one on the strongest American supporters of the Neo-Lamarckism school of evolution, he believed in evolution, but not in Darwin’s theory of natural selection as a means to that end. Cope was a strong believer in the law of use and disuse—that an individual will slowly, over time, favor an anatomical part of its body so much that it will become stronger and larger as time progresses down the generations. The giraffe, for example, stretched its neck to reach taller trees and passed this acquired characteristics to its offspring in the new developmental phase that is added on to the fetus in the womb. This new stage of sharing of genetics would be added on after all gestation is completed and the offspring is ready to be conceived.^[113]

In less than 40 years as a scientist Cope published over 1,400 scientific papers, a record that still stands to this day.^[114][115] These include three major volumes: On the Origin of Genera (1867), The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1884: "Cope's bible") and "Essays in Evolution". He discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species during the Bone Wars compared to Marsh's 80.^[116] Cope is today known as more a herpetologist and paleontologist, but his contributions also extended to ichthyology; he catalogued 300 species of fishes over three decades.^[117] In total he discovered and described over 1,000 species of fossil vertebrates and published 600 separate titles.^[118]

The salamander, Dicamptodon copei (Nussbaum, 1970)^[119] and the lizard Gambelia wislizenii copeii (H. C. Yarrow, 1882)^[120] are among the species named for Cope. The Copeia, the foremost journal for ichthyologists and herpetologists, was named in Cope's honor in 1913 because of his work in the field.^[121] His Pine Street home is recognized as a national landmark.^[122]

[edit] Annotations

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] Selected Works

• On The Origin of Genera; From the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Oct. 1868 (Merrihew & Son, 1869)
• The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (Government Printing Office, 1884).
• "The Origin of the Fittest: Essays on Evolution" (Nature, 1887). Google Books / Archive.org
• The Crocodilians, Lizards and Snakes of North America (Government Printing Office, 1900).

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Edward Drinker Cope

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Cope, Edward Drinker.

• Dinosaurs named by Cope, at DinoData
• Profile of Edward Drinker Cope at the Niagara Falls Museum Collection
• Edward Drinker Cope obituary, 1897 archived via JSTOR