Cope's head on the wrong end
One printed mistake fed a feud that ran for decades.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
The man who named this animal put its head on the wrong end, and then he printed it. In 1867 Theophilus Turner, an army surgeon at Fort Wallace in Kansas, came across huge bones in a ravine. He called them an "extinct monster." In March 1868 they reached this Academy. Edward Drinker Cope, a young scientist here and a student of Joseph Leidy, named the creature Elasmosaurus. Cope described it with a short neck and a long tail.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Check opening hours and admission before you go, and ask the Academy whether the original bones are on show.
Sources
- Joseph Leidy's remarks, 8 March 1870, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, ExplorePAHistory
- Elasmosaurus, Wikipedia
- Edward Drinker Cope, Wikipedia
- Bone Wars: Book of the Week, Biodiversity Heritage Library
- Academy of Natural Sciences, Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
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