#edward drinker cope

[si-nequal-is]

Nobody:

James Moriarty in FGO be like:

Context: just edited photo of legendary paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. Moriarty in FGO is literally looks like that.

[earlypalaeoart]

"Laelaps aquilunguis [Dryptosaurus] occupies the foreground on a promontory, where his progress is interrupted by the earliest protest of an Elasmosaurus. Mosasaurus watches at a distance with much curiosity and little good will, while Osteopygis views at a safe distance the unwonted spectacle. On the distant shore a pair of the huge Hadrosauri browse on the vegetation, squatting on their haunches and limbs as on a tripod. Thoracosaurus crawls up the banks with a fish, and is ready to disappear in the thicket."

From 'The Fossil Reptiles of New Jersey (Continued)' by Edward Drinker Cope, The American Naturalist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 1869), pp. 84-91

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2447336

[puffbirdstudio]

When I was in 8th grade I participated in a school district history competition (I think as part of History Day? I dunno, it was just a huge assignment that took most of the term). Over the course of the term, we learned how to take and keep organized notes, how to do research in university-level libraries, how to read newspapers from over a hundred years ago on microfiche...

And I wrote a paper. Because I've always been into dinosaurs, I decided to base my paper on the history of paleontology as a science, and over the course of my research, I found the fascinating history of the Bone Wars between O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope.

Ultimately, my paper was about how these two dufuses built their careers on one-upping each other to find the most spectacular fossils. They'd lead expeditions out to the western US to find vast fossil fields in the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks out here, they'd dig up as much as they could and seal it in plaster to ship by train back to the eastern institutions of learning that were sponsoring them, and then take huge hammers to anything they couldn't dig up so the other guy wouldn't be able to use it.

Which is, obviously, Not Best Practices.

We don't have any way to know how much was lost in this bone race. What we do have are sketches one or the other of them made of bones in situ that actually cannot be found in any of the collections they were supposedly sent to. We have documentation of bones that we know were put in plaster and sent, but never uncrated or documented at their intended destination.

Anyway, as part of our assignment we had to submit our research projects and papers into the State History Day high school competition. and I got the $100 prize from the state's historical preservation organization for my paper's theme.

Which was a real shock to me, because I was just focused on DINOSAURS and wrote maybe one or two throwaway lines in the whole ten pages about these guys' destructive behavior.

Anyway, I think about that a lot.

[alex-fictus]

Diplodocus, I’m sorry you’re not the star here, the Bone Wars are calling me

Diplodocus.

Jurassic. 161-145 MYA.

A certified long boi. And victim of the pissiest war between 2 privileged 1800’s paleontologist.

[vedalkensamurai]

The only thing paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope loved as much as Dinosaurs was humiliating his rival Othniel Marsh. If they played Commander together, what cards would Cope use to humiliate his opponents?

[boobookittenartblog]

Edaphosaurus by Zdeněk Burian

Edaphosaurus is a genus of extinct edaphosaurid synapsids that lived in what is now North America and Europe around 303.4 to 272.5 million years ago, during the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian. American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope first described Edaphosaurus in 1882, naming it for the "dental pavement" on both the upper and lower jaws, from the Greek edaphos έδαφος ("ground"; also "pavement") and σαῦρος (sauros) ("lizard")… (via: Wikipedia)

[valandrawrites]

2024 Recommended Fics - Incomplete List

Here's my start at an end of year round up. If you're looking for a specific kind of fic or trope, let me know, and I'll try to find something for you! I have many, many more I could add, and what I've included is in no particular order.

I didn't list the rating or warnings with this because it just got too long, and honestly, I'm lazy. Read at your own risk.

A. fragilis by eachainn @eachainn

This is quite simply the best fic I've ever read. Do not continue until you read this one!

150 million years ago, an Allosaurus finds a stranger had wandered into his territory and he wants the intruder out.

1878, the middle of what will become known as the Bone Wars between O.C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. Castiel Novak is transporting fossils from the latest dig in South Dakota back to Yale. He has to be careful, because there are people who work for Professor Cope who would gladly take the fossils off of his hands.

Those Who Get in the Way of Peace by ladyofthelake17 @ladyofthe-lake

“Don’t make me an optimist. You will ruin my life.”

Dean Winchester finally has his shit together: business is booming at his auto repair shop, he's eating healthy (okay, he's eating salad with bacon bits), he's exercising (in a cemetery). He's single, but he's claiming it as a good thing. And so what if Sam's not talking to him? So what if his dad is marrying an insane artist? And so what if the priest marrying them is hot as hell with a name that sounds like a sin just to say it — Castiel?

AKA: another Fleabag fic, but maybe it'll have a happy ending. Maybe.

Illicit Ink by allmystars @allmystars-i

Dean Winchester has a secret. He does this thing maybe two or three times a week, and he loves it, don’t get him wrong, but… He’s a camboy, and that’s not exactly something he wants shared around the breakfast table. When Dean decides he needs a change, it’s nothing too drastic, just a tattoo. But the hot-as-sin tattoo artist he gets to do the job might just change everything.

Ground Control to Major Tom by MrsShinigamiDaiko @mrs-shinigami-daiko

Dean Winchester dreamed of being a mechanic all his life, but he never thought he would end up working as a mechanic for NASA and going into space. He is thrust into his first ever space mission after a strange lunar body, dubbed Luna-b I, mysteriously appears in Earth’s sky. Teams of astronauts scramble up to the permanent lunar base and begin analysis to determine if the blue orb is any threat to mankind. Most of the first team is sent home after a few months, nearly all of them having fallen ill with devastating cases of space sickness. As time goes on, it becomes clear that something altogether unnatural is going on here. Dean feels like he’s losing his mind as he and his crewmates also begin to succumb to sickness. He races to figure out what could possibly be the root cause. Is Luna-b I really just some weird, deep space rock that got caught in the Moon’s orbit by chance? Or is it something much more sinister, watching and waiting for the opportune moment?

Pinfall by crowleyo @crowleyo

Cas runs the family diner with his adopted son, Jack. His old high school flame rolls into town and he thinks he can just step back into Castiel's life. Well... He's kind of right.

This Impossible Happiness by FriendofCarlotta @friendofcarlotta

In one universe, Dean Winchester is pushing thirty. He’s just danced at his little brother’s wedding, he likes his job at the garage, and he goes on the occasional hunt with friends and family. He’s also desperately lonely for someone to share his life with. One day, he finds a mysterious package outside his door. It contains a news clipping about an urban legend that just might be real, and a book by Professor Castiel Novak, who happens to specialize in that same urban legend.

In another universe, Castiel Novak’s roadside motel is slowly dying, its business hollowed out by the interstate system. Dean Winchester, the man who asked him to run away together years ago, is only a painful regret these days. Until the day a mysterious letter Castiel doesn’t remember writing brings Dean back to his doorstep.

Out there in the multiverse, a man and an angel look for each other in all the wrong places. In the meantime, they might as well help a few other versions of themselves figure things out.

Then Comes the Rain by someonetoanyone @someonetoanyone-blog - a three part series

“I’m not looking forward to it,” Rowena tells him, as though that will absolve her of anything, “he may have a better solution for this, but the spell requires a smidge of spilled Grace. He’ll need to be hurt for this to work, and — Dean, all joking aside, you may be the only person fit to do this.”

“Oh, this’ll be great — go ahead, tell me why I’m the only one that can get butt-fucked to save the world.”

Mind Your Own Business by BunnyHunter

While the ability to overhear the secret thoughts of the people around him was distracting at best and anxiety-inducing at worst, Castiel had found ways to cope that included a pair of noise-canceling headphones and burying himself in his PhD research. After hearing inner thoughts for his entire life, there were very few things he overheard that surprised him anymore. So imagine his shock when his roommate Sam's brother, Dean, came to stay with them. While Dean may have been able to keep a straight face on the outside, his inner thoughts told a much different story.

Survivalism by bleuzombie @bleuzombie

Genetic engineers Castiel Novak and Dean Winchester are on the verge of a breakthrough in cancer treatment and possibly even a cure, using genetic manipulation and incredibly, shark DNA.

Following a devastating diagnosis of brain cancer, and amid growing pressure from his boss, Dick Roman, for results, Castiel is pushed to an act of desperation. He tests the cure on himself with disastrous and violent results.

He has never been so hungry.

Dean Winchester’s half-way house for orphaned half-monsters (and humans) by foolondahill17 @foolondahill17

What if Dean just kept every kid he’s ever interacted with?

A re-write of season 6 onwards in which Dean slowly collects every conceivable stray that crosses his path.

The eyes of a lamb by naughtystiel @naughtystiel for Shedar

The year is '98 and Spring is approaching fast. For most, the season is a symbol of new beginnings with Mother Nature’s chaste kiss that breathes life into everything once more. It's inspiring, peaceful and beautiful. So, the fact that this is exactly when a certain serial killer loves to strike makes Detective Winchester's blood boil. Two years in a row now, the guy has slipped through his fingers, not leaving a single trace behind. No clues, no leads, just murdered women in the most picturesque places imaginable. And the worst thing of all? Sometimes Dean catches himself admiring the killer's work.

where there is darkness by quiettewandering @quiettewandering @wanderingcas 

When Castiel Milton takes a job to be the new assistant keeper at Whaleback Lighthouse in Kittery, Maine, he expects to live out his new life in quiet isolation. What he gets instead is Dean Winchester: bitter, brash, and, like Castiel, harboring a dark secret. As the spark of attraction between them grows into a flame, the lighthouse walls start closing in—as do the ghosts of Dean and Castiel's checkered pasts.

[hesperocyon-lesbian]

can i also know ur serious fact?

Paleontologists in the US love to talk about the bone wars (a rivalry between Othneill Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope that became so heated that they destroyed fossils they didn’t have time to take with them to prevent the other from getting them), but what’s pretty much always left out of the narrative is that their work was inextricable from settlerism and westward expansion.

They brought rifles and soldiers with them on their expeditions explicitly for the purpose of shooting natives, namely the Sioux. Their expeditions in the 1870s were primarily focused on the then territory of Wyoming, which was actively under the process of colonization, and which they firmly contributed to by effectively looting one of its natural resources.

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Throwback Thursday: The Curious Case of Brontosaurus

Everyone has heard of Brontosaurus. It's one of the top five dinosaurs kids learn. However, do you know about the rocky past of this fan favorite? Brontosaurus was discovered in 1879 by Othniel Charles Marsh (or at the very least, his crew) during the height of the infamous Bone Wars. It was collected from Como Bluff, Wyoming and it was a nearly complete skeleton. All it was missing was its head (a typical, sauropod problem).

At this time, the Morrison Formation was at the center of the Bone Wars conflict so Marsh was feeling rushed and pressured to publish on this new find before his rival, Edward Drinker Cope, had the opportunity to publish something new first. Even though he hoped to recover a skull, Marsh opted to publish without.

Now, the Yale Peabody Museum couldn't display a headless skeleton so they decided to sculpt one. As I mentioned before, sauropod skulls are not easy to come by. The damn things are so small compared to the rest of the body and so fragile that the pop off and disarticulate. The only skulls that had been found with any substance was Camarasaurus and a few Brachiosaurus fragments. I mean, look at the size difference between Camarasaurus and Diplodocus skulls:

(The Diplodocus skull is significantly smaller. You can see it below and to the right of the Camarasaurus in the top photo).

So, all they had to really go off of was Camarasaurus and Brachiosaurus so they made a composite of the two that ended up looking like this:

Horrifying, isn't it? I mean, those two sauropods aren't even closely related to Brontosaurus.

In 1903, Elmer Riggs argued that Brontosaurus was not different enough from Apatosaurus to warrant a different genus. A different species, sure, but not genus. Since Apatosaurus was named first, it had priority therefore Brontosaurus excelsus became Apatosaurus excelsus. However, the general public missed the memo so Brontosaurus stayed in common literature.

In 2015, an extensive study was done on the diplodocid branch (check out my Monday Musings post on sauropod phylogeny if unfamiliar with sauropod families) and they concluded that Brontosaurus was legit. Usually, names don't get revived to keep things from getting confusing but Brontosaurus survived nearly 100 years of existential crises so its popularity in the general populace allowed for a revival.

And that is the short history of how Brontosaurus existed then didn't exist and then existed again. Tune in tomorrow to learn about Brachiosaurus altithorax.

[a-book-of-creatures]

I know Edward Drinker Cope gets mocked for putting the head of Elasmosaurus on its tail, but let's not forget the time he found a stingray spine and decided it was a dolphin snout. Namely,

"Established on an osseus body which nearly resembles the elongate muzzle of a Priscodelphinus without teeth [...] I suspect that it will be found to be allied to the sword-dolphins of the genus Rhabdosteus, Cope”. (Cope (1875), quoted in Purdy and Uhen (2008))

Purdy, R. W. and Uhen, M. D. (2008) Agabelus porcatus (Cetacea, Odontoceti) is a stingray spine. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 28(1), pp. 251–252.

[judgeitbyitscover]

Bone Wars (1998) & Two Tiny Claws (1999) by Brett Davis

Cover illustrations by Bob Eggleton

Bone Wars (1998)

Montana, 1876. Othniel Charles Marsh, one of the two top paleontologists in the world, in the state's Judith River fossil beds, doing what he does best: digging up the bones of dinosaurs. Montana is a big state, but Marsh can't rest easy. Edward Drinker Cope, his biggest rival, and the other top paleontologist in the world, is also in the area, and there simply aren't enough bones for both of them, leading them to play dirty tricks. And time itself is against them: the fierce snows of winter are on the way and, rumor has it, so is Sitting Bull, fresh from his triumph at little Big Horn.

Another complication: two foreign scientists are also competing for the bones. One says he's from Sweden, the other says he's from Iceland. One of them enlists Cope to help him, while the other befriends Marsh.Marsh and Cope don't want the fossils to leave the country, so they decide to bury the hatchet and work together to outwit the visitors. This turns out to be harder than they thought. The foreign scientists possess amazing technology, but that's because they are much more foreign than they claimed. They don't just want to take the bones out of the country -- they're fighting over who will get to take them clean off the planet....

Two Tiny Claws (1999)

Montana, 1907. Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History aims to dig up fossils of Tyrannosaurus Rex, the most fearsome carnivore ever to walk the Earth. He dismisses rumors of earlier paleontologists encountering both resurrected dinosaurs and aliens from space. He's more worried by reports that notorious bank robber Luther Gumpson is in the neighborhood. But then Brown discovers that the aliens are real, they're back, and they're mad. And he'll see more than the bones of T-Rex, when he encounters the awesome ground-pounding predator in the flesh....

[earlypalaeoart]

Restoration by Edwin Sheppard under direction of Edward Cope of his proboscidean Loxolophodon (now Uintatherium) theory from Edward Cope, 'The Monster of Mammoth Buttes', The Penn Monthly, August 1873, pp. 521-534.

[unsoundedcomic]

Ashley are you related to the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope? I love dinos and I think about the bone wars when I see Cope in your siggy n whatnot

It's possible! There's also a moderately famous race car driver named Cope. But I've never done any genealogy work, I couldn't tell you for sure :) Both my parents did the 23 and Me thing, and both lines are solidly British and Eastern European, very boring.

[akariuta311101]

E-Edmontosaurus

1. Taxonomic Group: Edmontosaurus is a genus within the hadrosaurid family, known for their duck-billed appearance.

2. Size and Weight: This dinosaur could grow to be about 40-50 feet (12-15 meters) long and weigh between 3 to 4 tons.

3. Time Period: Edmontosaurus lived in the Late Cretaceous, around 70 to 66 million years ago.

4. Location: Fossils have been found in North America, particularly in Alberta, Canada, and U.S. states like Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado.

5. Diet: A herbivore, Edmontosaurus fed on a variety of plants, including leaves, twigs, and possibly fruits, using its beak and dental battery to chew.

6. Distinctive Features: It had a robust body with a long tail, and its front limbs were shorter than its hind limbs. It could move on all fours or on two legs.

7. Head Structure: The skull had a toothless beak for cropping plants and hundreds of teeth in the back for grinding vegetation.

8. Movement and Behavior: Edmontosaurus was both bipedal and quadrupedal. It likely walked on all fours to forage and reared up on its hind legs when necessary.

9. Initial Discovery: Edward Drinker Cope discovered the first fossils in 1871. The genus name Edmontosaurus was later assigned by Lawrence Lambe in 1917.

10. Cultural Significance: Edmontosaurus is a prominent dinosaur in paleontology, often featured in museums and popular media, providing valuable insights into hadrosaurid life.

11. Skin and Fossil Finds: Some Edmontosaurus fossils include skin impressions, giving scientists a rare look at its scaly, rough skin.

12. Social Behavior: Evidence suggests that Edmontosaurus may have lived in herds, providing protection and facilitating social interactions among individuals.

13. Nesting and Reproduction: Like other hadrosaurs, Edmontosaurus likely nested in colonies, with fossilized nests and eggs giving clues about its reproductive habits.

[dcwildwestfest]

A. Fragilis

By spirithorse | @eachainn Art by hexentaenzerin | @hexentaenzerin

Link to Fic | Link to Art

150 million years ago, an Allosaurus finds a stranger had wandered into his territory and he wants the intruder out.1877, the middle of what will become known as the Bone Wars between O.C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. Castiel Novak is transporting fossils from the latest dig in South Dakota back to Yale. He has to be careful, because there are people who work for Professor Cope who would gladly take the fossils off of his hands.

Rated Explicit | 68,000 words | Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death