Othniel Charles Marsh

Biography

Early life and family

Othniel Charles Marsh was born on October 29, 1831, near Lockport, New York. He was the third of four children born to Mary Gaines Peabody (1807–1834) and Caleb Marsh (1800–1865). The Marsh (nee Marshe) family and Peabody families immigrated to America from England in the 1630s. Mary died shortly after the birth of her fourth child in 1834. Caleb remarried in 1836 and Othniel moved with the family to Bradford, Massachusetts. Soon after, Caleb's business fortunes soured, and Othniel's early years were marked by financial struggles.

Caleb purchased a farm in Lockport when Marsh was twelve. As the eldest son, Othniel was expected to assist his father on the farm, and the two had a contentious relationship. Othniel much preferred excursions in the woods to his chores. Among his childhood influences was Ezekiel Jewett, a former military officer and amateur scientist who fostered Othniel's interest in the sciences. Jewett had been drawn to the area by the fossils unearthed by the enlargement of the Erie Canal, and the two would hunt and prospect for specimens together.

By 1847, Othniel was attending school at the Wilson Collegiate Institute, and later attended the Lockport Union School. Othniel was undecided as to what he would do for a living, but his future was dramatically changed due to the intervention of his uncle George Peabody, a successful banker. With Peabody's financial assistance (spurred by Marsh's aunt, Judith), Marsh enrolled in Phillips Academy in 1851. Older than most of the other students, he was nicknamed "Daddy" by his peers. He was initially an unremarkable student, devoting much of his time to leisure and games, but the next year decided to focus on his studies. "I changed my mind," he later told a biographer, "during an afternoon spent on Dracut Heights [Lowell]. I resolved that I would return to Andover, take hold, and really study."

Marsh applied himself to his studies and graduated valedictorian of his class in 1856. In the summers off of school, he prospected for minerals in New York, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. Upon graduation, Marsh decided to attend Yale, rather than Harvard, where many of his relatives had attended. He ran his letter to George Peabody asking for the funds by Judith first, who disapprovingly noted it contained two spelling errors. Peabody agreed to cover Marsh's expenses and give him an allowance for spending money, and Marsh moved to New Haven in September. Marsh was a good student, but not a thrifty one; Judith, who was in charge of monitoring Marsh while Peabody was in Europe, regularly upbraided her nephew for his lax accounting habits and large expenses. Marsh graduated eighth in his class, using a scholarship he won for the best examination in Greek to finance a master's degree from Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, as he developed an interest in becoming a professor of science. While in graduate school, Marsh published his first scientific papers on minerals and vertebrate fossils from his Nova Scotia trips, which possibly inspired Marsh's interest in vertebrate paleontology. He obtained his master's degree in 1862.

European travels and return to Yale

Following school, Marsh declined a professorship at Yale and instead took a tour of Europe; it is possible the trip was to avoid being drafted into the American Civil War, although he might have also been disqualified from service on account of his eyesight. Marsh traveled through England, France, Germany and Switzerland, studying with or making the acquaintance of prominent scientists such as Heinrich Ernst Beyrich, Wilhelm Peters, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg and Henry Woodward. In discussions with his uncle, Marsh convinced the businessman to fund a natural history museum at Yale. While studying at the University of Berlin in late 1863, the 32-year-old Marsh first met 25-year-old Edward Drinker Cope, who was also on a scientific tour of Europe. Cope had much less formal schooling than Marsh, but had already published thirty-seven papers. The two Americans spent a few days together and would become friends.

After a salmon fishing excursion with Peabody in Ireland, Marsh returned to America in July or August 1865. Marsh had expected Peabody's gift would have resulted in a position at Yale, but it took until 1866 when Yale established a chair of paleontology at the university. Marsh was given the position, but no salary was attached; biographer George Bird Grinnell suggested that this suited Marsh just fine, as he was more interested in research than teaching. The Yale position was notable because Marsh became the first professor of paleontology in the USA, thus spearheading a renaissance in this field which was hitherto limited to being a hobby of wealthy men and lagging behind Europe. Marsh's own interests shifted to paleontology, and after 1869 his other scientific contributions had mostly ceased.

During his travels abroad, Marsh had kept correspondence with Elizabeth Cogswell Dixon, the wife of senator James Dixon. Elizabeth had functioned as Marsh's aunt during the late 1850s, and tried to direct Marsh's attention to a number of "pretty persons" to marry, most heavily her niece, Constance Kinney. Marsh's interest was instead held by Dixon's eldest daughter, Clementine, who had before his European trips rebuffed his advances. Upon returning from his travels, Marsh again tried and failed to win her hand. He would seriously pursue only one other woman, the daughter of railroad magnate John W. Garrett, but was similarly rebuffed, Marsh's friends noting that he "lacked the light touch so helpful in social intercourse." He would instead remain a lifelong bachelor.

Trips west

While teaching, Marsh toured the country, visiting museums to inform the planning of the Yale Museum. In 1868, he visited Cope; since their meeting, they had expressed warm wishes in letters to each other and even named species after each other. Cope took Marsh on a tour of the marl pits in New Jersey where he was finding fossils; unbeknownst to Cope, Marsh would later pay the pit operators to divert their finds to him instead. Marsh later noted that Cope's reconstruction of his newest find, the aquatic reptile Elasmosaurus, was flawed: Cope had placed the head of the animal where its tail should have been. Marsh's criticism wrankled Cope, and threatened his nascent career; he responded by critiquing errors in Marsh's work, and moving in on areas Marsh was prospecting in. Their relationship began to sour.

Marsh was looking further afield than New Jersey for fossils. While still studying in Europe, Marsh had identified the western American frontier as "the most inviting field for Paleontology in North America". In 1868, after visiting Chicago for a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Marsh elected to join other members to Omaha on a "geological excursion"; it was Marsh's first trip to the far western United States, and it inspired him to return to prospect.

Plans for a prospecting trip were delayed due to conflict with Native American tribes, and Marsh's first trip started west from New Haven on June 30, 1870. The prospecting groups were formed from Yale students or recent graduates. Their path took them through Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, all the way to San Francisco, then back to Kansas. They were regularly escorted by companies of soldiers, including Buffalo Bill Cody and Frank North. They arrived back in New Haven on December 18. The expedition uncovered more than a hundred new species of vertebrate fossils. Marsh's papers on his finds, particularly a species of Pterosaur larger than any previously known, provided a major boost to his career. Also valuable were the personal relationships Marsh forged, the publicity the expedition had received, and the growing attention at the market for bones in the west—bones Marsh was willing to pay for.

Expeditions to areas old and new followed in 1871, 1872, and 1873. Marsh was soon joined by other scientific parties. Cope traveled to western Kansas to prospect in 1871. John Wesley Powell, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and Clarence King were also traversing the American West on geological surveys. King would forward bones he found to his friend Marsh. Cope's trips into areas Marsh considered "his" territory caused their relationship to become hostile. They began attacking each other in scientific papers for perceived errors in classification or falsified publication dates, embroiling other scientists like Hayden, Joseph Leidy, and Louis Agassiz in their spats. Marsh was admitted to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences in 1872, with Cope the lone member who voted against him.

Bone Wars

In early April 1877, schoolteacher and amateur geologist Arthur Lakes wrote a letter to Marsh about large bones he had found while prospecting with a friend in the vicinity of Morrison, Colorado. Lakes began uncovering more massive fossils with the help of some students. He sent a batch of bones to Marsh unprompted, but after receiving no answer to his letters, Lakes wrote to Cope as well. Unaware of the animosity and politicking between the two scientists, Lakes' actions sparked what author Mark Jaffe called "the paleontological equivalent of the California gold rush of 1849", now known as the Bone Wars.

Marsh belatedly sent word back to Lakes on June 9, reaching him out west on the 20th. Enclosing a check for $100 (equivalent to $3,023 in 2025), Marsh asked Lakes to keep word of the find a secret; Lakes replied that he had already heard back from Cope, who had immediately written back offering money, and Lakes had already sent fossils on to Marsh's rival in Philadelphia. The news that Cope had some of the fossils spurred Marsh into action; he telegraphed Lakes back and sent word to Mudge to head to Morrison and supervise the dig. Previous to this, Marsh had spent very little time or attention on dinosaur finds. Mudge arrived in the area on June 29, armed with code words to obscure their communiques from Cope, and Marsh sent another agent to Philadelphia to pick up the bones Lakes had sent to Cope.

Lakes's find was the first of several discoveries of large dinosaur bones out west in 1877. A naturalist O. W. Lucas wrote Cope about bones he had found while collecting plants near Cañon City, Colorado; though Marsh got word of the finds and routed Williston there to set up a rival dig, Williston reported that Lucas, by now in Cope's employ, was getting the best large fossils. Williston did manage to persuade Lucas that smaller specimens, including one of what looked like a bird, could go to Marsh, and among these fossils Marsh described the diminutive Nanosaurus. Marsh would be luckier with another letter that was sent to him in July, from two men near Como Bluff, Wyoming, reporting on the bones they had discovered there; they forwarded some of their discovered bones to Marsh as well. Marsh reacted immediately, sending Williston to meet and employ the men, William Harlow Reed and William Edwards Carlin, and their contract included the provision that they take care to "keep all other collectors"—namely, Cope or his men—out of the area and away from the finds.

The area around Como Bluff turned out to be one of the richest deposits of dinosaur specimens in the world, and the discoveries would form the core of the paleontology collections for the Peabody Museum, as well as the National Museum of Natural History. At Peabody, Marsh built a team to handle the process of unpacking, sorting, and documentation, but was reluctant to give anyone else credit for the work. Among the dinosaurs Marsh described were Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Apatosaurus, and he devised the classification for the herbivorous giants he and Cope were discovering—sauropods. Marsh's agents sent back some thirty tons of fossils in their first year of digging, and he expected even more results in 1878, as he expanded his roster of bonehunters.

Later career

After King resigned as head of the USGS, Powell took control and set about reorganizing it by speciality, creating a position of "Vertebrate Paleontologist" that Marsh would occupy from 1882 to 1892. Marsh had been reluctant to take the job, as the fossils he found while with the USGS would belong to the government, and not to him. Powell likely made a gentleman's agreement with Marsh that he could retain certain specimens to entice him to accept the offer. In return, Marsh was given about $150,000 over the course of a decade (equivalent to $5,004,310 in 2025) to collect, catalog, and publish his finds.

The 1880s were a successful decade for Marsh, while his rival Cope suffered from failed mining investments and was unable to secure a teaching position. Marsh was elected to presiding officer of the National Academy of Sciences in 1883. He received honorary degrees from Harvard University and Heidelberg University in 1886. He built an 18-room mansion for himself on Prospect Hill near the Peabody Museum, where he hosted notable guests including Red Cloud, Alfred Russel Wallace and Alexander Graham Bell. Marsh caught the attention of the scientific world with the 1880 publication of Odontornithes: a Monograph on Extinct Birds of North America, which included his discoveries of birds with teeth. These skeletons helped bridge the gap between dinosaurs and birds, and provided invaluable support for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin wrote to Marsh saying, "Your work on these old birds & on the many fossil animals of N. America has afforded the best support to the theory of evolution, which has appeared within the last 20 years" (since Darwin's publication of Origin of Species). However Marsh's scientific output began to slow considerably, which biographers Charles Schuchert and Clara LeVene attributed to the sheer mass of bones he had procured.

After Cope was forced to give up bones he had gathered as a volunteer during his time on the Hayden survey, he switched to attacking Marsh through the press. Having spent years gathering up evidence and complaints from Marsh's disgruntled assistants, Cope, through reporter William Hosea Ballou, launched a series of attacks on Marsh and Powell in the pages of the The New York Herald, starting in January 1890. What had once been a feud confined to the scientific community became national news, as papers including the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer picked up the story. Marsh took a week to prepare a rebuttal, collating and then picking apart Cope's arguments one by one. According to Henry Fairfield Osborn, Marsh won the exchanges by countering Cope's scattershot hostility with an air of dignity. More specific accusations were fielded by two of Marsh's former assistants in the pages of the American Naturalist, but the story fell out of the public eye quickly. Cope's article did have an effect on congressman Hilary A. Herbert, who had long argued against what he saw as wasteful government spending on science. In May 1892 he led the efforts that sharply cut the appropriations of the USGS. Also at issue was the dispensation of the fossils gathered by the USGS, which were being held by private hands at the Peabody Museum. Powell, damaged by his involvement in Marsh's feud with Cope, asked Marsh to tender his resignation.

Personality and views

Grinnell described Marsh's success as resulting in him being "sometimes impatient, intolerant, and even autocratic," which he attributed to his lack of socialization as a boy with peers and the lack of "smoothing off of roughness" from having never married.

Even with friends he remained aloof, as one of Marsh's assistants described him as having "an absence of the complex exchange of confidence which normally exists between intimate friends."

Marsh was difficult to work for, and his staff at the Peabody Museum constantly turned over. His workers would find that Marsh grilled them about their discoveries, then wrote it down himself later and took credit. Marsh's longtime assistant, Oscar Harger, was forbidden to publish his own paleontology papers; Harger and Williston changed the focus of their scientific work entirely to go around Marsh's prohibitions.

McCarren called Marsh the greatest proponent of Darwinism in 19th-century America. In 1877 Marsh said, "I am sure I need to offer no argument for evolution; since to doubt evolution today is to doubt science, and science is only another name for truth."

Marsh was a strong advocate of the importance of type specimens, describing them as "the lights that mark the present boundaries of knowledge".

Legacy

According to Peter Dodson, Cope and Marsh "[have] left a legacy, and each was a distinguished researcher. But really it seems impossible to say one name without the other. Cope and Marsh." Marsh's names for three dinosaur groups and nineteen genera have survived. McCarren called Cope the only other American paleontologist who could rival Marsh's legacy.

Cope and Marsh's rivalry led to a tremendous explosion in the number of known dinosaurs, but their efforts to outdo each other also created classification errors and hasty scholarship that future paleontologists had to untangle.

Marsh named the following dinosaur genera:

He named the suborders Ceratopsia (1890), Ceratosauria (1884), Ornithopoda (1881), Stegosauria (1877) and Theropoda (1881).

He also named the families Allosauridae (1878), Anchisauridae (1885), Camptosauridae (1885), Ceratopsidae (1890), Ceratosauridae, Coeluridae, Diplodocidae (1884), Dryptosauridae (1890), Nodosauridae (1890), Ornithomimidae (1890), Plateosauridae (1895) and Stegosauridae (1880).

Dinosaurs named by others in honour of Marsh include Hoplitosaurus marshi (Lucas, 1901), Iaceornis marshi (Clarke, 2004), Marshosaurus (Madsen, 1976), Othnielia (Galton, 1977) and Othnielosaurus (Galton, 2007).

Marsh's finds formed the original core of the collection of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. The museum's Great Hall is dominated by the first fossil skeleton of Brontosaurus that he discovered, which was reclassified as Apatosaurus for a time. However, an extensive study published in 2015 concluded that Brontosaurus was a valid genus of sauropod distinct from Apatosaurus. Prior to Marsh's efforts, the entirety of fossil remains known in North America was quite small. As a result of the generosity of George Peabody, Marsh was able to keep discovery teams in the field almost continuously from 1870 until his death. The material recovered in his 30 years of collection was simply astonishing to the scientific community. At the Peabody Museum, Marsh was the first to create skeletal displays of dinosaurs, which are now common in countless museums of natural history.