The Natural History Cupboard Podcast
Aug 23, 2026 · 20 min · 7 segments
This week in the Natural History Cupboard we travel back to the old west to learn about one of the oddest rivalries in history. We look at the bone wars what they are how they started and what legacy…
All of these names have one big thing in common.
They're all famous rivals throughout scientific history, much like Godzilla and Kong, but one specific thing.
punch-up has helped shape the world of paleontology so much that it gave us such famous species as Apatosaurus, Elasmosaurus and many other household names.
I'm talking of course about the Bone Wars, a period of history that saw espionage, explosives and one-upmanship to such a level that it is genuinely staggering.
Their dispute, which turned into a feud, which turned into a rivalry, lasted roughly between 1870 and 1897.
Far more than just a simple tiff between two stubborn academics, it transformed paleontology from a small, largely descriptive science into a field driven by large-scale fossil expeditions, public museums and fierce competition.
This rivalry resulted in the discovery of more than 130 species of dinosaurs and countless other prehistoric animals.
But it also encouraged scientific misconduct, financial ruin and lasting bitterness.
Ironically, despite their hatred for one another, Cope and Marsh accomplished far more together as rivals than they either likely could have achieved alone.
Every major success by one man forced the other to search harder, excavate faster and publish sooner to one up the other.
The result was an explosion of fossil discoveries that fundamentally changed humanity's understanding of prehistoric life in North America.
First off, though, we need to meet the two paleontological punch-up rivals and where they began.
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