Edward Drinker Cope

Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American pioneering paleontologist, comparative anatomy comparative anatomist, zoologist, herpetology herpetologist, ichthyology ichthyologist, and editor-in-chief of The American Naturalist. Author or coauthor of more than 1400 scientific papers, he is known for his fossil collections now at the American Museum of Natural History, Cope's rule, and his rivalry in the Bone Wars against Othniel Charles Marsh. Cope was elected in 1866 to the American Philosophical Society, in 1872 to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and in 1878 to the Société géologique de France. He received in 1879 the Bigsby Medal and in 1891 the Hayden Memorial Geological Award. Quotes The Wyandotte Cave is as well worthy of popular favor as the Mammoth Cave National Park Mammoth. It lacks the large bodies of water which diversify the scene in the latter, but is fully equal to it in the beauty of its stalactites and other ornaments of calcite and gypsum. The stalactites and stalagmites are more numerous than in the Mammoth, and the former frequently have a worm or maccaroni-like form, which is very peculiar. They twist and wind in masses like the Lock of hair locks of Medusa, and often extend in slender runners to a remarkable length. The gypsum rosettes occur in the remote regions of the cave and are very beautiful. There are also masses of amorphous gypsum of much purity. The floor in many places is covered with curved branches, and, what is more beautiful, of perfectly transparent acicular crystals, sometimes mingled with imperfect twin-crystals. The loose crystals in one place are in such quantity as to give the name of "Snow Banks" to it. In other places it takes the form of japanning on the roof and wall rock. On the Wyandotte Cave and its fauna The American Naturalist 6 7 1872 406–422 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/270970 (quote from pp. 406–407) One structure requires another to be viable. Thus, long legs in a grazer presuppose a long neck to enable it to reach the ground with its lips. Hooked claws presuppose carnassial teeth or a hooked beak. For a horizontal body to be properly poised on two legs instead of four, the weight of the viscera must be transferred backward, and the anterior regions of the body lightened. This we find to be the case with birds and Dinosauria. The lower bones of the pubis, with the contained organs, are thrown backward, while the forelimbs are lightened and the head reduced in proportionate (not absolute) size. The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West 1875 U.S. Government Printing Office https://books.google.com/books?id=eJDoZ95tY4oC&pg=PA10 10 (offprint from Volume 2 of ‘’Report of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories’’) The relation of the Nearctic realm nearctic and Neotropical realm neotropical Fauna faunæ at their point of junction is as yet a problem not fully solved. Where there is placed between the two an obstacle to migration of land and fresh water animals, as between the Gulf Coast of the United States Gulf coast of the United States and the islands of the West Indies, the differential character of the faunæ are well marked; but where the northern continent gradually passes into the long isthmus of Mexico, the case is far different. Here no barrier obstructs the passage of animals from one region to the other and nothing but Climate climactic and Meteorology meteoric causes can limit the range of the types of either fauna. A careful investigation of this subject must have an important bearing on the whole subject of the influence of Natural environment environment on animal life.In general the studies into the zoölogy of Mexico have shown conclusively that the high plateau is populated by an animal life which differs from that of the eastward plains, or Tierra caliente Tierra Caliente. The highest land is known as the Tierra Alpina, and the intermediate region is the Tierra templada Tierra Templada. As residents of the land incapable of performing migrations, the Batrachia and Reptilia offer the most excellent field for the determination of the boundaries of these districts. On the Zoological Position of Texas Issue 17 of Bulletin of the United States National Museum U.S. Government Printing Office 1880 https://books.google.com/books?id=OagKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3 3 (51 pages; Cope seems to be using the term “Tierra Alpina” idiosyncratically.) Quotes about Edward Drinker Cope A notoriously combative Quaker naturalist, Edward Drinker Cope relished a good fight. His infamous quarrel with Yale palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, which climaxed in 1890 when it became front-page fodder for the New York Herald, was one of the great scandals of nineteenth-century American science. But it was not his last. By the 1890s, his once prodigious vertebrate palaeontology research programme was in tatters. Marsh's many triumphs had demoralized him, while a ruinous succession of unlucky mining investments had depleted his family fortune. Cope, the quintessential gentleman-naturalist, was compelled to pawn his fossil collections and seek a paying position in a university or museum. Unfortunately, he lacked the tact and the proper temperament to adapt himself to an increasingly professionalized American scientific establishment. Struggling and dissatisfied professionally, and facing a painful, life-threatening illness, Cope picked one final feud with Chicago's Field Columbian Museum and its embattled director, Frederick J. V. Skiff, over the thorny issue of scientific autonomy versus authority in America's natural history museums. Paul D. Brinkman, Edward Drinker Cope's final feud Archives of Natural History 43 2 2016 305–320 https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/anh.2016.0386 10.3366/anh.2016.0386 The year 1877 was very significant in Cope's career as a paleontologist. His own trips took him into the Permian Basin (North America)#Depositional history Permian deposits of West Texas western Texas. This exploration Henry Fairfield Osborn Osborn has called the "first great turning point in Cope's paleontological life." ... In Texas he discovered deposits which would again eventually produce considerable quantities of fossils of previously unknown fauna. Here he discovered specimens of Dimetrodon. ... In the field Cope's crew headed by J. C. Isaac worked in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. Charles Hazelius Sternberg Sternberg and Russell Hill were again at work in Kansas and in Oregon. This was also the year when Cope purchased the scientific journal The American Naturalist thus assuring himself of a very ready and uncritical outlet for publishing his papers. ... During Cope's period of editorship, the journal published a wide variety of articles representing many branches of biology as well as geology, ethnology, reviews of scholarly meetings, book reviews and the like. Jane Pierce Davidson, The Bone Sharp: The Life of Edward Drinker Cope Issue 17 of Special publication: Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1997 9780910006538 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JcZkXjp04_gC&pg=PA41 41 (237 pages) External linka Category:1840 births Category:1897 deaths Category:Academics from the United States Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Paleontologists from the United States Category:People from New Jersey Category:People from Philadelphia Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty Category:Zoologists from the United States