April 21, 2025 • 47 mins
Michael and Ryan welcome paleontologist and children’s author Ashley Hall to dig into the wild world of fossils—from her work at the La Brea Tar Pits to the drama of the Bone Wars. They explore the queer legacy of Sue the T-Rex, the ethics of fossil trade, and why collaboration in science matters more than competition. Plus: a nod to Mary Anning and a teaser for next week’s ghostly episode.
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Theme: “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License. “Running Fanfare” by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Subscribe and Watch on YouTube
Connect with Us: Michael Judson Berry | Ryan Wilder
Theme: “Happy Dance” by Mr. Smith is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International License. “Running Fanfare” by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I feel like I have already lost this episode. Do
you want me to leave? I will, I'll just go.
I'll let you guys be.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Bryan, you know you're welcome here.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Look, there was an immediate evolution of the podcast. You
guys are going to go talk to dead.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
People, Michael, No, you're now listening.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yeah, welcome to the new podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Brian.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I hate to say you've officially been phased out. Hello, Hello,
where we're recording. Welcome back to White Noise.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Oh, yes, we have returned.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Ryan introduced our next guest, and then we're going to
just launch it.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So our friends Ashley from last week was like, I
know a phenomenal paleontologist. Wait, Kate speak to Kate from us?
What did I say, Ashley? Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
We're off to a good start.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
We met Kate last week and she's like, I know
an amazing paleontologist. Safe to me. So welcome Ashley Hall.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yes, we were all just getting to know each other
and I was like, wait, I have to hit record,
because real quick recap of everything you were just telling
us about yourself and your history and yeah, if you
don't mind doing a quick recap, of course.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So I'm Ashley Hall.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I'm a paleontologist, educator, and children's book author. And I'm
originally from South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame, and
I grew up there and then I went to school
at IU Bloomington, which is down in the southern part
of the state, and I majored in anthropology and animal behavior.
(01:36):
So I have a background in bones and specifically faunal osteology,
so fauna meeting animal and I studied bison bones and
lots of other animals that people were eating on the
planes about two to three thousand years ago. And so
while not directly tied to paleontology, I did study bones
and bones are in every vertebrate, and so to paleontology
(02:01):
is not something that's easy. It's very difficult and usually
not an undergraduate level thing. I majored in anthropology and
then sort of took my career from there, and actually
Montana State University where I am now, it's one of
the only places you can get an undergraduate degree in paleontology. Oh,
so if you like that, that is definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Go hang out with Ashley.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
So I graduated in two thousand and seven, I moved
out to Los Angeles and I worked at the Los
Angeles Zoo in education. That was sort of my foot
in the door into paleontology, and not necessarily paleontology at
that time, because at that time I was interested more
in being a zookeeper, fun fact. And so I went
(02:47):
out there for an internship to work with the birds.
And so I worked with many different birds like birds
of prey, Corvid's like ravens and crows, and then lots
of different like exotic birds like flamingos and tucans, vultures
and things.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I've read the book of Bird's Mind. Have you ever
read that?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
No, And it talks about how intelligent they are, and.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Oh yeah, scary intelligence, like never be mean to a
bird because they will remember you.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
They understand water displacement, and I know a fair amount
of human beings who don't.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So in any case, I moved out to you know, La,
worked at the LA Zoo, worked in education, so I
was teaching zoo camp there and then I learned that
the museum was in town. And at that time back
in two thousand and eight, like social media really wasn't
a thing, and so I didn't know, you know that
there was a museum and of course the Librea tar Pits,
(03:39):
which is super famous for animals getting trapped in asphalt
there worked are right, that.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Sneaky black stuff. And so I worked both at the
Natural History.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Museum in Los Angeles and the world famous Librea tar Pits,
where I was giving tours and educational programs and you know,
explaining how paleontology works to the general public.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Long story show.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I'm in Montana now, but my career has taken many
different turns. I was in LA for nine years, I
was in Cleveland for five years, and then I've been
in Bozeman for five years.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
This next month, Nice, I was going to say, when
were you at the Libret tarbet so those two thousand and.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Eight three was there?
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah, the zoo was two thousand and seven. Two thousand
and eight was the Natural History Museum and the tar pits.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then I left in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Okay, So I lived in La for a while and
I lived in Park Librea, which is housing development right
next to the Librea tar Pits. In starting in two
thousand and nine, off and on for a few years,
and I walked through my Starbucks was on the other
side of the tar pits, and every day, and so
is my gym.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I would walk through the.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Tar pits and I'd go to the gym and then
I'd treat myself to my green iced tea at the Starbucks.
And I would say, I spent so much time there,
and it just hit me. I was like, I wonder
if we ever passed each other. Oh, probably because I
loved that place, and whenever people came to visit, I'd
be like, the first thing we're doing going to walk
through the tar pits, We're going to get coffees. It's
(05:08):
like I love every time. That's like that was my
home base.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Oh I love that. And isn't the smell? So do
you like the smell?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I weirdly do I do too. Isn't it kind of
like fuel? Kind of like if you've just had your
driveway redone.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
It smells like hot asphalt because yeah, yeah, I didn't
actually think about it as being hot asphalt, but yeah,
And so it's also like it's beautiful the park, but
at the same time, some of the sculptures are kind
of disturbing.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
So they've like sculptured animals like screaming and dying at.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The so morbid.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
There's like a baby wooly mammoth as I recall some
sort of wilymouth. Yeah, that's like trapped in the tar
with like a little you know, sign on the side
where it's like what you see depicted here is a
mammoth in its last moments.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
It's real. God.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's just like what a pleasant park of death.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
And that's one of the most interesting things about paleontology
is we're so crazy because all paleontologists like we think,
you know, baby fossils are cute. We're like, oh my god,
look at the little baby, and everyone's like it's like
dead though, Like yeah, but like we wouldn't know about
it if it hadn't died.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, that's so true. It's like some of the people
in Pompeii that were like curled up and you're like,
isn't that sweet?
Speaker 5 (06:24):
You what?
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Though? It Actually it goes well with my other interest though,
because I'm kind of a morbid, girly same you know,
all things like death culture, and I just think it's
fascinating and so it kind of wraps in with my.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Love of Paleo.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I'm with you on that. Wait what do you mean
when you say death culture. I'm so intrigued now because
also you as a person, Like again, this is a podcast,
is not video, but like you are like a sunshine
personified type person. You're so pretty and you have like
really like light blood hair that's in this really cool
pixie cut with like fierce eyeliner. Like you are so.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Little, Bob, I haven't like tucked up in the back.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I was gonna. I thought maybe you had like a
like a pony tail back there.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I was.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I have been known for having like I have a
platinum Bob, So I'm actually like growing it out a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But you're spot on.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
No, I'm I'm like like I'm a goths girl, but
I'm like I don't know how to be because I'm
also a swiftie and so it's.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Just very amusing.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
I'm a very positive, happy person. But I also love cemeteries,
Like that's my favorite place to just like go and
spend time.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Same, I love a cemetery. There was searing. There was
one behind where I went to grad school. That's where
I used to go eat my lunch every day, where
everyone knows that it was creepy. I went just go
in London and there was like a really old one
of those ones where most of you know, hundreds and
hunches of year old, where a lot of the headstones
are like half sunken into the ground. I would go
and just like hang out with like pick a person
and be like, we're having lunch today.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Yes, Oh my god, Wait, can we start a podcast?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Wait?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I think we just became best friends and also started
a podcast.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Great. I think we should have conversations with like dead people.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I know people who do that on the streets of
New York City. Oh my god, Sam, how do you
guys feel? So I love the smell of box woods.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh that is gross.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Oh so that's so interesting. That's actually the one thing
that I like. I when you go to a cemetery,
there's always lots of boxwoods, and when they're freshly cut,
that smell is very pleasant for me. But apparently that's
a genetic thing. It's like cilantro, it's oh smell.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So I hate cilantro because of genetics.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Same, so you you probably hate box woods because of genetics. Then, yes,
because they smell like peep to some people.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, we had them around my house and my dad
always thought that it smelled like a cat pet in
the bushes.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Interesting. I don't know if I have ever noticed, So
maybe I don't have an issue with that. I know
those trees and somewhere that smell like seamen. Yeah, you
notice those that are so pretty, the coum trees Bradford pear.
Invasive species provide no ecological value whatsoever to our world
other than where they belong, which is not here.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
They're pretty and smelly.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Where are they from?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
They're attorney's.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Oh they are very smelly, but they are very pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
So in any case, I'm happy to be here, happy
to talk poeontology.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yes, thank you for getting us back on track. Thank
you for hosting. I feel like I've already lost this episode.
Do you want me to leave? I will, I'll just go.
I'll let you guys be Ryan.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
You know you're welcome here.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Look, there was an immediate evolution of the podcast. You
guys are going to go talk to dead people.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Michael, No, you're now listening.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, welcome to the new podcast. Brian, I hate to
say you've officially been phased out.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's all right.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
We had a similar one a while ago where I
had a friend on who was our guest. It was
a good friend of mine and it turns out she's
from the same town as Ryan. And then them just
went and then knew all the same people, and I'm
pretty sure I got up, left clean my apartment, came back.
They were still going, well, look.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
This is why we have an editor.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
We have an editor. You just keep stepping in. This
is starting to concern me, Ashley.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
All right, shall we get to the meat and potatoes
of why we all are here, which is this competition?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Ashley?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Do you know the rules?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
No?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Great, So how it works.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
There's rules, I mean the really.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Ryan and I reach given a topic by last week's judge.
So Kate and we each have ten minutes to riff
on said topic with you, and then at the end
you choose a winner, whatever that means to you. There
are literally no parameters that could just be like Ryan
referenced this one thing that I really enjoy, so therefore
(10:52):
he wins. Usually it's Ryan actually taught me something and
I learned something new, and then and then you give
us our topic for next week, perfect, and it will
be whatever pops into your head.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
There's no pressure. So you said you kind of indicated
that you maybe had a topic earlier. You think you're
sticking with that one or has it evolved? Given?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
No, I think I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna stay.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Okay, Okay, oh okay, great?
Speaker 3 (11:14):
All right, which one of us would you like to
go first?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
You know, I think we need Ryan. Ryan's the podcast
guest today.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
So Ryan, nice of you, you know, such a pleasure
to be here.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Let me tell you joining us from snowy Woodstock, New York.
All right, Ryan, your time starts now.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Oh well, I guess we didn't say the topic is
Bone Wars.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Oh sorry, the topic is Bone Wars.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So yeah. So I did a deep dive in this
and Michael did text me earlier today and he was like,
so are you going to talk about is it Cope
and Marsh Yes? And I was like, I was like,
I haven't At that point, I was like, I haven't
done my research yet. But instead I'm actually gonna probably
talked mostly about Sue and Stan. Do you know Sue
and Stan are Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's worth noting copen Marsh actually pretty much the foundation
of American paleontology, and while they were at each other's throats,
they did kind of drive. They did kind of drive
paleontology in America and kind of set the way it
kind of worked going forward. But that being said, it
turns out that modern day bone wars revolve heavily around
(12:29):
this Black Hills Institute, which is run by this Nate,
this guy named Peter Larson, and they've been behind a
number of the major finds in the I guess the
previous thirty forty years or so, and they're still around.
But they found Stan the t rex in nineteen eighty seven,
and then they found Sue the t Rex was Sue
(12:52):
first or Stan first? I think Sue was in nineteen
ninety and Stan was eighty seven. All right, I got
it right?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Am I allowed to interject? Or am I?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Oh, I'm gonna need you to interject a lot with mine.
I'm actually looking to you for confirmation on them.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Like I was, like, I don't think I should give
any clues. Is this like a test?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
It can be, yeh, but I don't want it to be.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I'm just only harshly judging from this side good.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So the oddly enough, the two of their biggest funds
ended up being sold and for two very different reasons.
So let's see which one is that. So I'll come
back to Sue. I'll talk about stand first. So Peter Larson,
who runs BHI, had this brother, Neil, and it sounds
(13:42):
like as brothers do. They ultimately ended up fighting and
disagreeing about the running of BHI, and they went to
dissolve the company, and Neil wanted his equity of the company,
and the only way that they could do that is
that they needed to sell assets to do it. So
it turns out that they had a fairly good fossil
(14:04):
of a t rex Namestan that they took to Christie's
and sold for almost thirty two million dollars, and they
it went to a private buyer, and for a long
time nobody knew where it went, but it turned out
that it's popped up and it's an Abu Dhabi and
it's going to ultimately be in their natural history museum there.
(14:25):
So I don't know if a private buyer bought it
or if the government, their government bought it, but that's
that's kind of what ended up happening now. Oddly enough,
Sue was quite the diva because her storyline is kind
of a shit show. So Peter, the troublemaker at BHI,
(14:46):
had paid this guy Maurice five thousand dollars to excavate
on his land and take away whatever he found. But
the drama here is that the land wasn't really Maurice's.
It was actually part of a United State's land trust.
And on top of it all, it was on indigenous
land as well, so there were potentially indigenous rights to
(15:06):
it as well. And actually I kind of found through
my research that there's a lot, I mean very fairly
some significant conversations to have around indigenous rights to all
of it. Absolutely absolutely, and in some cases they actually
have returned a number of the artifacts back to indigenous cultures.
I would tell you countries outside of the United States
(15:27):
have been better at it. Shocker, the FBI actually raided
and took su and then it became this like giant
custody battle. Ultimately it was determined that it was Maurice's
right like it was, it was on his land, it
was his thing. He had actually paid for excavation. He
didn't pay for them to take it away, but as
(15:48):
soon as he had the right to sell it, he
took it to Southeby's. It was sold for around eight
million dollars is what I recall, and the Field Museum
in Chicago bought it, but that was actually bocked. It
was purchased with big mac money McDonald's and and Dole
wet money Disney where the where the primary contributors to
(16:10):
buy it for the Field Museum in Chicago.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
And when you go there you can see the lab
and it says the McDonald's laboratory. Yeah, so they bought
it and donated it.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I'm loving it.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I'm loving it.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That's how you'll win, right.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So I didn't know this, but Sue, the t rex
is also a queer icon.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yes, yes, I yeah, so I was actually going to
correct you, but I wanted you to keep going because
I felt like you might get there, and you did, so,
Sue came out as they them on Twitter formerly Twitter
now x.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
But because we don't know the actual gender of the dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Interesting, yeah, Sue, it was assumed that because of the
size of I don't know what the bone is, but
the one where the legs connect, that it was smaller
and it was an assumption that she was a female.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Yeah. So in paleontology, when we're looking to like gender
a dinosaur really a sex right, it's sexing a dinosaur.
Gender is so broad, and dinosaurs we don't know what
gender they wanted to be, so Sue has not successfully
been sexed. There is a very specific way that we
(17:29):
have to sex a dinosaur, and it has to do
with their leg bones like mammals. So mammles have you know,
antlers and some you know, females don't males do. There's
very specific ways that they show their male or female.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
With birds, it's a little more difficult because they actually
have more of an external looking display of their sex.
So like with Mallard ducks, right, ducks have super bright
colors if they're male, and super drab colors of their
female because the females sit on the nests and the
males are the ones who are competing over the females.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
So that's orgism.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Yeah, and so with dinosaurs because we don't have any
of the plumage anymore, and they are the closest thing
to birds. Birds today are modern day dinosaurs. We call
them avian dinosaurs, and we just don't have the external
portions of dinosaurs to figure that out. However, birds when
(18:29):
they're egg laying, right, so when they're they're they bread
and they're you know there, they're time to lay eggs.
Females have to eat more calcium, and they store that
calcium in a tissue called medullary tissue, and it resides
within their long bones in their legs and so you know,
that way it doesn't strip their bones of calcium.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They have extra calcium.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Reserves for laying eggs because eggs are made of calcium
calcium carbonate. With one dinosaur, actually, this is so fun
you're talking about this. We have one dinosaur here at
Museum of the Rockies called b Rex, and b Rex
is actually the very first sext dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
So we know that she was female because she had
that tissue within her long bones. So sue is they them?
We do not know, so we should not give her
a gender. But I love saying she because because you know,
you really don't get that many dinosaurs that are girls.
Usually people will say like, oh, like he's really big
(19:34):
or he's really scary, because dinosaurs have always sort of
been like a symbol of like masculinity or something because
they're scary. I don't know how that works, but but
we don't think of dinosaur as necessarily as girls. People
always are like, oh, he's so cool. So when Sue
came out, that was pretty neat because Sue was named
after Sue Hendrickson, which is the discoverer of.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
The t rex.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Oh okay, I was wondering how she got the name Sue. Yeah,
it was kind of right.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah, you came out as it would be interesting if
we found out, you know, down the line, if Sue
was a boy, it would be a boy named Sue
like Johnny Cash so well.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
And also I found I hope you'll confirm this, but
like she was, she was pretty fierce. And I'm going
to go with the she under the kind of queer
methodology here, But she was pretty fierce like the drag
queen would be because she was a survivor. She was
apparently pretty like the bones indicated that she was pretty
screwed up, extremely like she had broken ribs, she had
(20:32):
a messed up arm and a whole bunch of stuff.
But like she's, you know, she's fierce. She's a survivor.
She like marched on and.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
The other thing too.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
It's so so I said, it's funny we're talking about
like male versus female dinosaurs here because we have the
very first sext t rex and really sex dinosaur here
upstairs in the gallery. And we also right now have
the Sue the t Rex traveling exhibit.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
It's called the Sue the t Rex Experience. Sue is
literally upstairs.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
What Yeah, Ryan, well done.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
So I like to believe you swimited because this is
like kismet, like we were supposed to do this podcast together. Yeah,
I'm happy to send some pictures to you afterwards if
you put.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Like, is Sue texting? I mean I mean texting, tweeting, tweeting.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
So yeah, So Sue has social media, so you can
follow the Field Museum's account, and then Sue has their
own account on x and uh.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But the the whole skeleton is upstairs.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
It's the cast of the skeleton because the original skeleton
is at the Field Museum in Chicago, and so it's
really neat because we're able to have the whole skeleton upstairs.
It actually highlights through sort of like visual lights and
sound like what bones were injured and kind.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Of like shows them as it's talking, and.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
So it walks you through all the pathology is what
they're called, so the injuries on the bones.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
It also came with.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
A triceratops skeleton that's up there with her, and a
bunch of other microfossils that indicated like what the environment
was like. And then there's a hilarious video that came
with it. And the video shows like a day in
the life of Sue. And there's a hilarious one where
Sue is walking and just like meandering along like a riverbed,
(22:24):
just like you know, chilling out, just having a day.
And there's a dead in kylosaur, one of the big
armored dinosaurs, on the beach, and Sue walks over to
it and just like hmmm, and just like takes a bite,
swallows it, and then just like walks around and then
just like stops and then takes the biggest shit.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Why who made this video?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I mean, hey, everyone likes poots.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
So.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
It is a unifying concept.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, Ryan, not to steal your thunder, but continue on.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
No, that was great. How much do I have time left?
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Way over a time, But that's okay. I was enjoying that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I had, like i'd layered on some extra things in
case I had more time or I had had time,
but it was I was going to talk about the
fact that getting dinosaur fossils is literally like a one
in a million chances. It's very very rare that you
get the the sit the all of the things that
need to happen for it to happen.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Yes, and I will say there is huge controversy on
the buying and selling of fossils. It is a huge
issue in paleontology, and it did, unfortunately start with Sue
because then people started to wonder like, oh, maybe I
can go out find dinosaur fossils and sell them, and
(23:42):
so now there's a whole black market fossil basically ring
and some of it, you know, like you can find
like websites that'll sell teeth and things for less than
millions of dollars. But the things that go to auction
really hurt the science of paleontology because you know, people
(24:03):
are seeing them as monetary value and not as scientific
or learning value. And you know, fossils don't come out
of the ground with a price tag on them. We
give them value, so but the real value is, you know,
what they can contribute to our knowledge of the natural world,
because you know, these animals are not being produced anymore.
So everything we have in the ground is finite, their
(24:26):
finite resources. So you know, at every museum I've worked at,
we have we've had a dig program. And the dig
programs are awesome because for less than eight million dollars,
you know, for what Sue went for, you can actually
fund like an entire paleontology program for like a decade.
(24:46):
You know, It's like for the sale of one t
rex would put a museum in a really good place
for scientific research for like years to come. And so
I have really strong feelings about the commercial trade. Vertebrate
fossils especially are seen as like, you know, the highest
monetary value dinosaurs of course, and it's also led to
(25:08):
a lot of head hunting where people will go, for example,
in Mongolia or other areas of the world, and they
will go and specifically only look for heads, and then
they will destroy the site and leave all the other
bones behind. Oh no, yeah, And so you'll see these
sites sometimes when we go out in the field that
are just destroyed and you're like, oh, someone's been here
(25:31):
and they found something good and they just left garbage behind.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So it's pretty gnarly.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
H who knows such a cutthroat industry it is? Yeah,
all right, Ryan, shall we yes? I guess I'll get this.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, ready go okay.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So the original Bone Wars. So I was looking, I
was like, what are the Bone Wars? And obviously when
you google it the original Bone War which, again the
extremely immature part of my brain needed to have a
solid giggle before I started looking at anything real. But
then I learned about the as as you reference, the
fathers of paleontology are our two friends Edward Dink Drinker Cope, right,
(26:26):
and who's our other friend here, marsh Carls Marsh oath
Neil Charles March. I love the name oth Neil. It's
coming back, It's it's it's it's on the rise.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Babies last year were named We're named No. I just.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I was like, what I wish?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And when you look up oth Neil, he looks like
an oath need oh he kind of he kind of
looks like a potato, but like an old potato that's
been sitting for a while, where it's like instead of
like roots coming down, it's like this big kind of
bushy beard situation, these little squinty as he literally just
looks like a really old potato Neil, don't you think.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Like Cope is kind of like like he could get it.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Cope is kind of a stud on the other side,
which I get why Marsh was. Maybe that's the root
of it. So I was roaming about them. So Marsh
was born.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Up Cope to see what he looks like.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
So Marsh was born in eighteen thirty one. Cope was
born seven years later, so they're both born before the
Civil War. I think Marsh is an interesting history where
he was born on a small farm in New York
and didn't have much. His mother died young. His father
tried to start a lot of businesses. None of them
went well. The father didn't do so well. Luckily he
(27:44):
had an uncle Warbucks also known as George Peabody, who
is the p of JP Morgan. And obviously George Peabody
did okay and became the philanthropist of like the daddy
of philanthropy, and luckily Marsh was one of the things
that he was like, I'll invest in you. So even
though Marsh's father really wanted him to stay and take
(28:04):
over the farm. He was like, Dad, you're a loser.
I'm gonna go with my uncle, who's super rich and
is basically paid for Yale at this point was like
installed a museum at Yale. And at that point I
guess there was no Paleontology wasn't a thing. But Marsh showed,
you know, he was an interest in science at our
young age, and his uncle took an interest, so he
(28:25):
paid for his studies. He ended up going to school
in Germany, which is then where he met Cope because
they both were studying in Germany slash dodging the Civil War,
like and the more I read about them, it's really
that's kind of how it went because then like Cope also,
so he was born to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania
who also they wanted him to go into the family business,
(28:47):
but they also took him to me They made the
mistake of taking him to cool natural history museums, and
he got really into that. So both of them were
studying in Germany at the same time, slash dodging the
Civil War, and they sort of hung out there studying
luckily until magically the war was over, and then they
were like, great, I finished my studies, I can come
home now, and they kind of became friends. I guess
when you look at the correspondence, Cope liked Marsh a
(29:09):
lot more than Marsh, like Cope, I believe, like Cope
was like, he's a great guy, and Marsh was like
he's tolerable. Like but then again, everything I've read about Marsh,
he was kind of like a jerk anyway, Like nobody
seemed to like him very much, Like he was cold,
he was distant.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Were they I've the quote I got back that is
that he's the Regina George of fossils.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
He kind of ease and he's such a shady bit
like he is the root. Because I think they probably
would have been great buddies had Marsh not been super shady.
So Cope came back. I think what I gather is
they're like Alphaba and Glinda, right, Like Cope kind of
was Alphabet. He was the one who wasn't a good
people person, but he genuinely was super smart and worked
(29:52):
really hard and had a real passion for this. And
Marsh was like Glinda. He was really good at spinning
the media and riding other people's coat tails and was
like kind of smart so and again and correct me
if I'm wrong, but he so. Anyway, so they come back.
Cope ends up working in New Jersey and where they
you know, this huge dig and he invites as a
(30:12):
reciprocal gesture, invites marsh along at some point to study
and who was his Cope was working with his mentor,
letle litel Lydell Lydell, and he was like, thank you.
So they were working in New Jersey they found this
dig and Cope invited Marshall and he was like, come
(30:34):
look at these dinosaurs we found and it seemed pretty
copa setic there for a while, and then they all
left and Cope before he went back to keep digging
and finding fossils, marsh snuck back and he bribed the
owner of the quarry to then give him any fossils
that were found. So then Cope goes back and like
marsh had all the fossils. That kind of stole things
(30:55):
from under his like from behind his back, which so
shady move number one. Really that should have done it.
But again Cope is not a horrible guy, but they
did sort of passive aggressive stuff after that.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Right because the should both have teamed up when really
they didn't.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
That's the thing, because they both had a lot of resources,
and they both were equally smart, and they seem to
be the two that were really leading the charge on
this on paleontology in general when it was just a
baby butting field. But instead, yeah, they turn on each
other because Marsh did dumb things like steal fossils from Cope,
like go behind his back to bribe people to get fossils,
and poor Copes just like now and then poor sweet Cope.
(31:30):
I think another downfall for him was he tended to
rush things right.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Poor hot so oh I did?
Speaker 3 (31:40):
He has the cool like hipster mustache that people try
to have right now.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Yes, and I feel like he would be do you
guys follow there's like an Instagram account that's like hot
Victorian men.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Of course, do you really?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yes, I know exactly, maybe God on that and I
think he.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Has been No, it's my Daguera type boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Oh there's another one. Then I think that's just called
like Hotti's a Victorian era something like that.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, so anyway, so Cope, he would be on there.
So Handsome Cope, Sweet Handsome Cope finds so actually, in
the meantime, too. They've found things and they've named things
after each other. And I found one person who said
it was out of them being friendly, like, oh, look
at this cool discovery. I'm going to name it after
(32:28):
my friend. But then when you look at what they were.
One was like a really fierce serpent, and Cope was like,
I'm going to name it after Marsh And it's like
so he's essentially calling him a snake, and Marsh like
named Cope after this like little like salamander thing, and
he was just like, yeah, you're basically like a little worm.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Like.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
I think it was actually really passive aggressive naming. I
think it was just like really intellectual passive aggressiveness.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It's like how to be Caddy back in the Victorian era.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Basically, I'm gonna have this really long Latin name that
the root of it is you y. So then sweet
Cope discovers a creature and he's putting it together right
and he and unfortunately he puts the head on the
tail and again because he's rushing, and so he oh,
you have it right there. What's the name of that
(33:15):
dinosaur again?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So this is a plesiosaur. It's a Lasmosaurus.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
The Locknus monster.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, it actually does look like the last Luckness monster.
So he wrote this whole thing in the American Philosophical
Society and he presented it and of course he put
the head on the tail instead of on the neck,
and so I have a feeling everybody there was like
he got it wrong. But then marsh was the one
to point it out. And then Marsh like very publicly
(33:44):
pointed out his blub and then he wouldn't let Cope
live it down for basically the rest of their careers.
That Cope made this big error where he put the
head on the butt. It basically he was the biggest
butt head in paleontology at the moment.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
It's such an interesting time in paleontology because like, our
knowledge of things now is so much better because it's
it's hindsight, right, So hindsight's twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
You're like, yeah, why did they do that?
Speaker 4 (34:08):
But you look at the skeleton and you've never seen
an animal with a neck that long, So why would
you think it would be?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
You know, and how would everybody else there? Because they
did read that. It was like an awkward moment. So
a lot of it wasn't just March, Like a lot
of them there noticed it pretty quickly that the head
was on the tail. How would you even know, though,
like just by looking at it, Like they said, just
by looking at it they knew. Yeah, and that they said,
he was just rushing to get it done.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, that's one hundred percent true.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
And they you know, they had knowledge of anatomy, and
so when you look at backbones like vertebrae, they go
a certain way, like if you put them back, so
they yeah, it was definitely a rush job.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
So then, bless his heart, like he went out and
he tried to buy every copy of the magazine to
be like no, no, no, no, no no no. And
he obviously didn't buy enough because a lot of them
were still out there. So yeah, and from then on
they were quote bitter Emmys.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, because he was a bitchy, because marsh was such
a bitch.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
So then after that, so then they went off to
the Midwest, and the two of them, I mean, it's
almost good and bad that they were rivals, right because
then it became this race to see who could find
the most and coolest, the mostest and bestest fossils in America.
And they each had their teams, and actually, thanks to
their feud, we found hundreds of fossils because the two
(35:25):
of them were basically constantly racing each other, yeah, to
find as many as possible, And they took paleontology to
the giantly Oh sorry the ten minutes. So I was
just so about some of the caddy things they did. So,
so Marsh sent spies into Cope's team that would like
report back and purposely sabotage some of his digs and
(35:47):
like right back to Marsh and telling what they were finding. Yeah,
And then Cope, like Cope would do things like he
would take detailed notes of everything Marsh did wrong. Every
time March screwed up Cope, it kept very detailed notes
about it. But a really messed up thing they did,
which is a really sad thing, is if one like
ran out of funding while still on a dig and
(36:08):
he knew the other one was going to swoop in
and take it, they would just destroy everything they couldn't take, yes,
so that the other one couldn't get it. So god
knows what they ended up destroying so that the other
one couldn't get it. But then when it really came
to a head, that was Marsh then got in with
the government because he obviously had better connections because of
Daddy Warbucks, Daddy Peabody, and so he ended up getting
in with the Feds and getting a government job. And
(36:31):
finally the good thing I suppose with that is getting
paleontology recognized by the federal government. But what he did then,
and at this point too, their obsessions had driven them,
you know, in pretty bad places. Cope at this point
was divorced, his wife had left him, he had no money,
he was living in a small apartment, and all he
had left were his fossils. Right at this point in
his career. It's later in his career, and Marsh tried
(36:53):
to basically not through him, but through one of the
secretaries with the President, take his fossils, because he he
used federal funding to get them, and he knew that
all Cope had left to his name was these fossils.
And Marsha was like, screw you, I'm going to take
them because I have the government on my side. So
he tries to seize them. Cope, of course, because not
only did he keep detailed notes of Marsh's mistakes, but
(37:15):
he also kept detailed notes with funding turns out he
spent almost all of his own money to buy them
and to fund these expeditions millions of dollars in today's money,
which he didn't have, which is why he was broke.
So luckily he managed to keep most of them, and
to retaliate, he sent a very detailed basically wrote a
detailed essay essentially explaining how horrible marshes to the New
(37:37):
York Herald, who then was like, Wade, it's sort of
backfired because the writer was like, I know, I'm going
to turn this on both of them, and the headline
was scientists wage bitter warfare, and it set off this
two week public battle because then, of course Marsh wrote
back and he was like, this isn't true, and the
two of them had this very public hissy fit fight
(37:58):
about each other, and then it ended up winning both
of their careers because the publicity was so bad that
Marsh ended up losing his job, the FEDS ended up
putting all their fund pulling all their funding for paleontology,
and they both ended up dying within a couple of
years of each other, essentially broke and discredited in a
lot of ways, which is really sad. They let their
(38:19):
obsessions sort of completely cloud their careers. I mean, look,
I and they died young too. They weren't that old.
They one was fifty six, one was sixty seven, Like
they were like old old men, and they both died penniless,
alone and with not much around them except for a
bunch of apostles.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I mean, we can take notes from that, you know,
like in paleontology now, So because of that, you know,
mainly it's like we all work together. There's many different
museums that like we share the same lands, Like we
all know the story of how these two bitter rivals
basically like threw each other under the bus until they died.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, truly, it was like first I was trying to
one up each other on discoveries, and then it became
upping each other on ruining their lives. Yeah, like it's
just it's really sad actually, because they're two such brilliant
men in your right. If only they had teamed up,
what they could have done.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, they could have teamed up.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
They could have divided and conquered. But I blame testosterone.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
I feel like a thousand women, one was an angry
potato when the other one was jealous, like it's it's
a really sad story. Yeah, yeah, the one he died Marsh,
who again he had so much, he had all the money,
he had the connections. He died with one hundred and
eighty six dollars in his bank account. Because at least,
like Cope, ended up selling off a lot of his
(39:34):
fossils to a private investor. Yeah, and Marsh at least
then he died, though the bulk of his went to
the Peabody Museum at Yale because obviously his uncle paid
for it. Yes, so at least like a lot of
his collection was saved.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
In major shout out to the Yale Peabody Museum who
just underwent like the most fabulous renovation. So they renovated
their entire fossil gallery and they actually remounted his original
Brontosaurus skeleton.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
I also learned I have a personal connection with Marsh
a little bit. The first time that he really blew
up in the media, because apparently he was really great
at using the media in general, like he would have
killed in this day and age on social media, he'd
be the biggest dinosaur influencer. But his first time that
he really became like a dino influence service time was
because of Syracuse, New York, where I'm from. He was
(40:25):
the first one to become sort of a celebrity in
the field. And they thought they discovered a giant in
Anadaga County called the Anadaga Giant, which is where I'm from.
And he was the one that went up and debunked
it as a hoax. He's like, no, this isn't real.
This wasn't a real thing, and it became like headline
news everywhere, and that's how he first got his name
(40:45):
out there.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
That's cool. Was it a faked skeleton or something? What
was that?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah? So it was an enormous petrified man had been
dug up on a farm and Marsh spotted the hoax,
clear tool marks in crevices on the block of gyps
so he had just been carved and then put in
the ground.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
And then is this also known as the Cardiff Giant.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
No, that's in the Cardiff Giant is in Cardiff, that's
in the UK. Okay, Yeah, that's a different one. This
was clearly like somebody made a big like stone man
and then stuck him underground and then dug him up.
And Marsh was the one that was like that looks
like a chisel. I'm pretty sure this was not carved,
(41:27):
but it, but it was headline news and he became
the cool hot palaeontologist.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Ironically, he was not the hot one of the two, but.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
He was.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
That was definitely a cop. So anyway, that's that's the
story of the original the the og bone War guys,
And you're right, it is pure testosterone and appropriately called
bone Wars because it does sound like it was just
like a giant pissing contest between the two of them.
They were standing at urinals. It probably started at urinals.
They were standing at two urnals. They got on all
well until they were New Jersey peeing, and then they
(41:59):
glanced over and then it was just like done from there.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
So I love the story about the newspaper how Cope
tried to go get all of them and tried to
burn them. And thank god social media wasn't around at
the time because it spread so much faster and uh
my god. But what I was going to say is
Mary Anning, who is basically the first recognized paleontologist, was
(42:24):
in England and she was born in seventeen ninety nine,
and she died in eighteen forty seven, So had they
paid attention to what was happening in England, they would
have learned more about what pleasosaurs looked like because she
was actually the first woman, first person to find pleasiosaurs.
And again that's the one that they put the heat
(42:46):
on the butt. So I mean, long story short, just
like listen to women.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Here we go, all right, Well, the time has come
as to which which one of us you would choose
as a winner? Whatever that?
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Oh man, you know you guys, you both did such
an amazing job. I mean, Ryan's dealing with like renovations
behind him, so yeah, a plus for being like sort
of you know, in chaos over there.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
But I feel like Michael's the winner on this one.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
Is it because we bonded over cemeteries? Ah?
Speaker 4 (43:23):
You know, it doesn't hurt, but I know, but your
narrative of the whole thing was very good. It's very
very thorough and I like the the.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
What do you call it comparison to Alphaba And.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
If only they these two came together at the end,
I wonder if they had their moment, if you know Wicked,
the musical they come back together at the very end
of the show and sing that song like I have
been changed for good. I think we really hope that
that happened for them, that like before they died broken penniless,
they had a moment where they were like, you know what.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
Maybe afterlife they've made up and their they're bone hunting
in the sky, I hope.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
So all right, well, thank you, and what is our
topic for next week?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
So this was fabulous?
Speaker 4 (44:11):
So you guys did a great job on both Stan
and Sue, one of the most controversial topics in paleontology,
and for the bone wars, which is the most famous
I think sort of part of paleontology history. But as
a spooky girly, my next topic for you guys is ghosts.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Great, totally random, I always into doing this, but I
talked about quantum sciences and quantum like realms and the
fact that it's not a fact, but there is good
papers on it around the fact that consciousness is potentially
actually a quantum behavior and if you start to think
(44:57):
about the fact that that there's layering of realities that
it is, you start to get into what could be
an explanation for ghosts, which I think is interesting. I
don't know if I'll focus on that, but that's uh,
it's a fun nerd out on it.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Oh, it's super cool.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
And I'm of the mind where we are still learning
about the world like you, and we're like we're trying
to pin down these things that people are for real experiencing,
Like there are people who swear up and down you
know this happened to them, and you can't decredit that
many people, So it's like, what is really going on?
Speaker 3 (45:37):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Oh, I'm so excited. Fun, this is great.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
All right, Well thank the cemetery.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yes, and remind people where they can follow you and
where they can buy your books. Your books look lovely.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, So I have I have three books.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
I have my first one, which is Fossils for Kids,
my second one, which I wrote with my husband called
Gems Kids, and then my third one is Prehistoric Worlds
from d K. And they famously did eyewitness books. Do
you know, do you remember eyewitness books? They were like
the big books with like lots of pictures, so I
(46:14):
grew up on those. So I was super excited to
be published by them. But you can buy them wherever
books are sold. Try to support local bookshops, but of
course they're available on many online retailers. People can follow me,
so I have social media presence as well, where I
post pictures and things about both my life and paleontology.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
You get a lot of cats in there too. You
can follow me on Instagram at Lady Naturalist.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
It's at Lady Underscore Naturalist, and then on Blue Sky
at Lady Naturalist and X is at Lady Naturalists.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
So awesome, awesome.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
Yeah, So if you like dinosaurs and all things paleontology,
give me a follow. And it's been a pleasure meeting
you guys, and I hope we can keep in touch.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Too, and I hope people come visit you and Sue
while she's there.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, visits the t rocks at Museum of the Rockies.
And it'll be here through September.
I feel like I have already lost this episode. Do
you want me to leave? I will, I'll just go.
I'll let you guys be.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Bryan, you know you're welcome here.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Look, there was an immediate evolution of the podcast. You
guys are going to go talk to dead.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
People, Michael, No, you're now listening.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Yeah, welcome to the new podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Brian.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I hate to say you've officially been phased out. Hello, Hello,
where we're recording. Welcome back to White Noise.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Oh, yes, we have returned.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Ryan introduced our next guest, and then we're going to
just launch it.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So our friends Ashley from last week was like, I
know a phenomenal paleontologist. Wait, Kate speak to Kate from us?
What did I say, Ashley? Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
We're off to a good start.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
We met Kate last week and she's like, I know
an amazing paleontologist. Safe to me. So welcome Ashley Hall.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yes, we were all just getting to know each other
and I was like, wait, I have to hit record,
because real quick recap of everything you were just telling
us about yourself and your history and yeah, if you
don't mind doing a quick recap, of course.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So I'm Ashley Hall.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I'm a paleontologist, educator, and children's book author. And I'm
originally from South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame, and
I grew up there and then I went to school
at IU Bloomington, which is down in the southern part
of the state, and I majored in anthropology and animal behavior.
(01:36):
So I have a background in bones and specifically faunal osteology,
so fauna meeting animal and I studied bison bones and
lots of other animals that people were eating on the
planes about two to three thousand years ago. And so
while not directly tied to paleontology, I did study bones
and bones are in every vertebrate, and so to paleontology
(02:01):
is not something that's easy. It's very difficult and usually
not an undergraduate level thing. I majored in anthropology and
then sort of took my career from there, and actually
Montana State University where I am now, it's one of
the only places you can get an undergraduate degree in paleontology. Oh,
so if you like that, that is definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Go hang out with Ashley.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
So I graduated in two thousand and seven, I moved
out to Los Angeles and I worked at the Los
Angeles Zoo in education. That was sort of my foot
in the door into paleontology, and not necessarily paleontology at
that time, because at that time I was interested more
in being a zookeeper, fun fact. And so I went
(02:47):
out there for an internship to work with the birds.
And so I worked with many different birds like birds
of prey, Corvid's like ravens and crows, and then lots
of different like exotic birds like flamingos and tucans, vultures
and things.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I've read the book of Bird's Mind. Have you ever
read that?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
No, And it talks about how intelligent they are, and.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Oh yeah, scary intelligence, like never be mean to a
bird because they will remember you.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
They understand water displacement, and I know a fair amount
of human beings who don't.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
So in any case, I moved out to you know, La,
worked at the LA Zoo, worked in education, so I
was teaching zoo camp there and then I learned that
the museum was in town. And at that time back
in two thousand and eight, like social media really wasn't
a thing, and so I didn't know, you know that
there was a museum and of course the Librea tar Pits,
(03:39):
which is super famous for animals getting trapped in asphalt
there worked are right, that.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Sneaky black stuff. And so I worked both at the
Natural History.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Museum in Los Angeles and the world famous Librea tar Pits,
where I was giving tours and educational programs and you know,
explaining how paleontology works to the general public.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Long story show.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I'm in Montana now, but my career has taken many
different turns. I was in LA for nine years, I
was in Cleveland for five years, and then I've been
in Bozeman for five years.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
This next month, Nice, I was going to say, when
were you at the Libret tarbet so those two thousand and.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Eight three was there?
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah, the zoo was two thousand and seven. Two thousand
and eight was the Natural History Museum and the tar pits.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then I left in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Okay, So I lived in La for a while and
I lived in Park Librea, which is housing development right
next to the Librea tar Pits. In starting in two
thousand and nine, off and on for a few years,
and I walked through my Starbucks was on the other
side of the tar pits, and every day, and so
is my gym.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I would walk through the.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Tar pits and I'd go to the gym and then
I'd treat myself to my green iced tea at the Starbucks.
And I would say, I spent so much time there,
and it just hit me. I was like, I wonder
if we ever passed each other. Oh, probably because I
loved that place, and whenever people came to visit, I'd
be like, the first thing we're doing going to walk
through the tar pits, We're going to get coffees. It's
(05:08):
like I love every time. That's like that was my
home base.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Oh I love that. And isn't the smell? So do
you like the smell?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
I weirdly do I do too. Isn't it kind of
like fuel? Kind of like if you've just had your
driveway redone.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
It smells like hot asphalt because yeah, yeah, I didn't
actually think about it as being hot asphalt, but yeah,
And so it's also like it's beautiful the park, but
at the same time, some of the sculptures are kind
of disturbing.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
So they've like sculptured animals like screaming and dying at.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The so morbid.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
There's like a baby wooly mammoth as I recall some
sort of wilymouth. Yeah, that's like trapped in the tar
with like a little you know, sign on the side
where it's like what you see depicted here is a
mammoth in its last moments.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
It's real. God.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's just like what a pleasant park of death.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
And that's one of the most interesting things about paleontology
is we're so crazy because all paleontologists like we think,
you know, baby fossils are cute. We're like, oh my god,
look at the little baby, and everyone's like it's like
dead though, Like yeah, but like we wouldn't know about
it if it hadn't died.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, that's so true. It's like some of the people
in Pompeii that were like curled up and you're like,
isn't that sweet?
Speaker 5 (06:24):
You what?
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Though? It Actually it goes well with my other interest though,
because I'm kind of a morbid, girly same you know,
all things like death culture, and I just think it's
fascinating and so it kind of wraps in with my.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Love of Paleo.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
I'm with you on that. Wait what do you mean
when you say death culture. I'm so intrigued now because
also you as a person, Like again, this is a podcast,
is not video, but like you are like a sunshine
personified type person. You're so pretty and you have like
really like light blood hair that's in this really cool
pixie cut with like fierce eyeliner. Like you are so.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Little, Bob, I haven't like tucked up in the back.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I was gonna. I thought maybe you had like a
like a pony tail back there.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I was.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I have been known for having like I have a
platinum Bob, So I'm actually like growing it out a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But you're spot on.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
No, I'm I'm like like I'm a goths girl, but
I'm like I don't know how to be because I'm
also a swiftie and so it's.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Just very amusing.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
I'm a very positive, happy person. But I also love cemeteries,
Like that's my favorite place to just like go and
spend time.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Same, I love a cemetery. There was searing. There was
one behind where I went to grad school. That's where
I used to go eat my lunch every day, where
everyone knows that it was creepy. I went just go
in London and there was like a really old one
of those ones where most of you know, hundreds and
hunches of year old, where a lot of the headstones
are like half sunken into the ground. I would go
and just like hang out with like pick a person
and be like, we're having lunch today.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Yes, Oh my god, Wait, can we start a podcast?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Wait?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I think we just became best friends and also started
a podcast.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Great. I think we should have conversations with like dead people.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I know people who do that on the streets of
New York City. Oh my god, Sam, how do you
guys feel? So I love the smell of box woods.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh that is gross.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Oh so that's so interesting. That's actually the one thing
that I like. I when you go to a cemetery,
there's always lots of boxwoods, and when they're freshly cut,
that smell is very pleasant for me. But apparently that's
a genetic thing. It's like cilantro, it's oh smell.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So I hate cilantro because of genetics.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Same, so you you probably hate box woods because of genetics. Then, yes,
because they smell like peep to some people.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, they do.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, we had them around my house and my dad
always thought that it smelled like a cat pet in
the bushes.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Interesting. I don't know if I have ever noticed, So
maybe I don't have an issue with that. I know
those trees and somewhere that smell like seamen. Yeah, you
notice those that are so pretty, the coum trees Bradford pear.
Invasive species provide no ecological value whatsoever to our world
other than where they belong, which is not here.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
They're pretty and smelly.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Where are they from?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
They're attorney's.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Oh they are very smelly, but they are very pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
So in any case, I'm happy to be here, happy
to talk poeontology.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yes, thank you for getting us back on track. Thank
you for hosting. I feel like I've already lost this episode.
Do you want me to leave? I will, I'll just go.
I'll let you guys be Ryan.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
You know you're welcome here.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Look, there was an immediate evolution of the podcast. You
guys are going to go talk to dead people.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Michael, No, you're now listening.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, welcome to the new podcast. Brian, I hate to
say you've officially been phased out.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's all right.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
We had a similar one a while ago where I
had a friend on who was our guest. It was
a good friend of mine and it turns out she's
from the same town as Ryan. And then them just
went and then knew all the same people, and I'm
pretty sure I got up, left clean my apartment, came back.
They were still going, well, look.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
This is why we have an editor.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
We have an editor. You just keep stepping in. This
is starting to concern me, Ashley.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
All right, shall we get to the meat and potatoes
of why we all are here, which is this competition?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Ashley?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Do you know the rules?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
No?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Great, So how it works.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
There's rules, I mean the really.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Ryan and I reach given a topic by last week's judge.
So Kate and we each have ten minutes to riff
on said topic with you, and then at the end
you choose a winner, whatever that means to you. There
are literally no parameters that could just be like Ryan
referenced this one thing that I really enjoy, so therefore
(10:52):
he wins. Usually it's Ryan actually taught me something and
I learned something new, and then and then you give
us our topic for next week, perfect, and it will
be whatever pops into your head.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
There's no pressure. So you said you kind of indicated
that you maybe had a topic earlier. You think you're
sticking with that one or has it evolved? Given?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
No, I think I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna stay.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Okay, Okay, oh okay, great?
Speaker 3 (11:14):
All right, which one of us would you like to
go first?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
You know, I think we need Ryan. Ryan's the podcast
guest today.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
So Ryan, nice of you, you know, such a pleasure
to be here.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Let me tell you joining us from snowy Woodstock, New York.
All right, Ryan, your time starts now.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Oh well, I guess we didn't say the topic is
Bone Wars.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Oh sorry, the topic is Bone Wars.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So yeah. So I did a deep dive in this
and Michael did text me earlier today and he was like,
so are you going to talk about is it Cope
and Marsh Yes? And I was like, I was like,
I haven't At that point, I was like, I haven't
done my research yet. But instead I'm actually gonna probably
talked mostly about Sue and Stan. Do you know Sue
and Stan are Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
It's worth noting copen Marsh actually pretty much the foundation
of American paleontology, and while they were at each other's throats,
they did kind of drive. They did kind of drive
paleontology in America and kind of set the way it
kind of worked going forward. But that being said, it
turns out that modern day bone wars revolve heavily around
(12:29):
this Black Hills Institute, which is run by this Nate,
this guy named Peter Larson, and they've been behind a
number of the major finds in the I guess the
previous thirty forty years or so, and they're still around.
But they found Stan the t rex in nineteen eighty seven,
and then they found Sue the t Rex was Sue
(12:52):
first or Stan first? I think Sue was in nineteen
ninety and Stan was eighty seven. All right, I got
it right?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Am I allowed to interject? Or am I?
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Oh, I'm gonna need you to interject a lot with mine.
I'm actually looking to you for confirmation on them.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Like I was, like, I don't think I should give
any clues. Is this like a test?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
It can be, yeh, but I don't want it to be.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I'm just only harshly judging from this side good.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So the oddly enough, the two of their biggest funds
ended up being sold and for two very different reasons.
So let's see which one is that. So I'll come
back to Sue. I'll talk about stand first. So Peter Larson,
who runs BHI, had this brother, Neil, and it sounds
(13:42):
like as brothers do. They ultimately ended up fighting and
disagreeing about the running of BHI, and they went to
dissolve the company, and Neil wanted his equity of the company,
and the only way that they could do that is
that they needed to sell assets to do it. So
it turns out that they had a fairly good fossil
(14:04):
of a t rex Namestan that they took to Christie's
and sold for almost thirty two million dollars, and they
it went to a private buyer, and for a long
time nobody knew where it went, but it turned out
that it's popped up and it's an Abu Dhabi and
it's going to ultimately be in their natural history museum there.
(14:25):
So I don't know if a private buyer bought it
or if the government, their government bought it, but that's
that's kind of what ended up happening now. Oddly enough,
Sue was quite the diva because her storyline is kind
of a shit show. So Peter, the troublemaker at BHI,
(14:46):
had paid this guy Maurice five thousand dollars to excavate
on his land and take away whatever he found. But
the drama here is that the land wasn't really Maurice's.
It was actually part of a United State's land trust.
And on top of it all, it was on indigenous
land as well, so there were potentially indigenous rights to
(15:06):
it as well. And actually I kind of found through
my research that there's a lot, I mean very fairly
some significant conversations to have around indigenous rights to all
of it. Absolutely absolutely, and in some cases they actually
have returned a number of the artifacts back to indigenous cultures.
I would tell you countries outside of the United States
(15:27):
have been better at it. Shocker, the FBI actually raided
and took su and then it became this like giant
custody battle. Ultimately it was determined that it was Maurice's
right like it was, it was on his land, it
was his thing. He had actually paid for excavation. He
didn't pay for them to take it away, but as
(15:48):
soon as he had the right to sell it, he
took it to Southeby's. It was sold for around eight
million dollars is what I recall, and the Field Museum
in Chicago bought it, but that was actually bocked. It
was purchased with big mac money McDonald's and and Dole
wet money Disney where the where the primary contributors to
(16:10):
buy it for the Field Museum in Chicago.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
And when you go there you can see the lab
and it says the McDonald's laboratory. Yeah, so they bought
it and donated it.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I'm loving it.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I'm loving it.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That's how you'll win, right.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So I didn't know this, but Sue, the t rex
is also a queer icon.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
Yes, yes, I yeah, so I was actually going to
correct you, but I wanted you to keep going because
I felt like you might get there, and you did, so,
Sue came out as they them on Twitter formerly Twitter
now x.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
But because we don't know the actual gender of the dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Interesting, yeah, Sue, it was assumed that because of the
size of I don't know what the bone is, but
the one where the legs connect, that it was smaller
and it was an assumption that she was a female.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Yeah. So in paleontology, when we're looking to like gender
a dinosaur really a sex right, it's sexing a dinosaur.
Gender is so broad, and dinosaurs we don't know what
gender they wanted to be, so Sue has not successfully
been sexed. There is a very specific way that we
(17:29):
have to sex a dinosaur, and it has to do
with their leg bones like mammals. So mammles have you know,
antlers and some you know, females don't males do. There's
very specific ways that they show their male or female.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
With birds, it's a little more difficult because they actually
have more of an external looking display of their sex.
So like with Mallard ducks, right, ducks have super bright
colors if they're male, and super drab colors of their
female because the females sit on the nests and the
males are the ones who are competing over the females.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
So that's orgism.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Yeah, and so with dinosaurs because we don't have any
of the plumage anymore, and they are the closest thing
to birds. Birds today are modern day dinosaurs. We call
them avian dinosaurs, and we just don't have the external
portions of dinosaurs to figure that out. However, birds when
(18:29):
they're egg laying, right, so when they're they're they bread
and they're you know there, they're time to lay eggs.
Females have to eat more calcium, and they store that
calcium in a tissue called medullary tissue, and it resides
within their long bones in their legs and so you know,
that way it doesn't strip their bones of calcium.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They have extra calcium.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Reserves for laying eggs because eggs are made of calcium
calcium carbonate. With one dinosaur, actually, this is so fun
you're talking about this. We have one dinosaur here at
Museum of the Rockies called b Rex, and b Rex
is actually the very first sext dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
So we know that she was female because she had
that tissue within her long bones. So sue is they them?
We do not know, so we should not give her
a gender. But I love saying she because because you know,
you really don't get that many dinosaurs that are girls.
Usually people will say like, oh, like he's really big
(19:34):
or he's really scary, because dinosaurs have always sort of
been like a symbol of like masculinity or something because
they're scary. I don't know how that works, but but
we don't think of dinosaur as necessarily as girls. People
always are like, oh, he's so cool. So when Sue
came out, that was pretty neat because Sue was named
after Sue Hendrickson, which is the discoverer of.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
The t rex.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Oh okay, I was wondering how she got the name Sue. Yeah,
it was kind of right.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Yeah, you came out as it would be interesting if
we found out, you know, down the line, if Sue
was a boy, it would be a boy named Sue
like Johnny Cash so well.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
And also I found I hope you'll confirm this, but
like she was, she was pretty fierce. And I'm going
to go with the she under the kind of queer
methodology here, But she was pretty fierce like the drag
queen would be because she was a survivor. She was
apparently pretty like the bones indicated that she was pretty
screwed up, extremely like she had broken ribs, she had
(20:32):
a messed up arm and a whole bunch of stuff.
But like she's, you know, she's fierce. She's a survivor.
She like marched on and.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
The other thing too.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
It's so so I said, it's funny we're talking about
like male versus female dinosaurs here because we have the
very first sext t rex and really sex dinosaur here
upstairs in the gallery. And we also right now have
the Sue the t Rex traveling exhibit.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
It's called the Sue the t Rex Experience. Sue is
literally upstairs.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
What Yeah, Ryan, well done.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
So I like to believe you swimited because this is
like kismet, like we were supposed to do this podcast together. Yeah,
I'm happy to send some pictures to you afterwards if
you put.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Like, is Sue texting? I mean I mean texting, tweeting, tweeting.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
So yeah, So Sue has social media, so you can
follow the Field Museum's account, and then Sue has their
own account on x and uh.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But the the whole skeleton is upstairs.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
It's the cast of the skeleton because the original skeleton
is at the Field Museum in Chicago, and so it's
really neat because we're able to have the whole skeleton upstairs.
It actually highlights through sort of like visual lights and
sound like what bones were injured and kind.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Of like shows them as it's talking, and.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
So it walks you through all the pathology is what
they're called, so the injuries on the bones.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
It also came with.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
A triceratops skeleton that's up there with her, and a
bunch of other microfossils that indicated like what the environment
was like. And then there's a hilarious video that came
with it. And the video shows like a day in
the life of Sue. And there's a hilarious one where
Sue is walking and just like meandering along like a riverbed,
(22:24):
just like you know, chilling out, just having a day.
And there's a dead in kylosaur, one of the big
armored dinosaurs, on the beach, and Sue walks over to
it and just like hmmm, and just like takes a bite,
swallows it, and then just like walks around and then
just like stops and then takes the biggest shit.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Why who made this video?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I mean, hey, everyone likes poots.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
So.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
It is a unifying concept.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, Ryan, not to steal your thunder, but continue on.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
No, that was great. How much do I have time left?
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Way over a time, But that's okay. I was enjoying that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I had, like i'd layered on some extra things in
case I had more time or I had had time,
but it was I was going to talk about the
fact that getting dinosaur fossils is literally like a one
in a million chances. It's very very rare that you
get the the sit the all of the things that
need to happen for it to happen.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Yes, and I will say there is huge controversy on
the buying and selling of fossils. It is a huge
issue in paleontology, and it did, unfortunately start with Sue
because then people started to wonder like, oh, maybe I
can go out find dinosaur fossils and sell them, and
(23:42):
so now there's a whole black market fossil basically ring
and some of it, you know, like you can find
like websites that'll sell teeth and things for less than
millions of dollars. But the things that go to auction
really hurt the science of paleontology because you know, people
(24:03):
are seeing them as monetary value and not as scientific
or learning value. And you know, fossils don't come out
of the ground with a price tag on them. We
give them value, so but the real value is, you know,
what they can contribute to our knowledge of the natural world,
because you know, these animals are not being produced anymore.
So everything we have in the ground is finite, their
(24:26):
finite resources. So you know, at every museum I've worked at,
we have we've had a dig program. And the dig
programs are awesome because for less than eight million dollars,
you know, for what Sue went for, you can actually
fund like an entire paleontology program for like a decade.
(24:46):
You know, It's like for the sale of one t
rex would put a museum in a really good place
for scientific research for like years to come. And so
I have really strong feelings about the commercial trade. Vertebrate
fossils especially are seen as like, you know, the highest
monetary value dinosaurs of course, and it's also led to
(25:08):
a lot of head hunting where people will go, for example,
in Mongolia or other areas of the world, and they
will go and specifically only look for heads, and then
they will destroy the site and leave all the other
bones behind. Oh no, yeah, And so you'll see these
sites sometimes when we go out in the field that
are just destroyed and you're like, oh, someone's been here
(25:31):
and they found something good and they just left garbage behind.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
So it's pretty gnarly.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
H who knows such a cutthroat industry it is? Yeah,
all right, Ryan, shall we yes? I guess I'll get this.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, ready go okay.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So the original Bone Wars. So I was looking, I
was like, what are the Bone Wars? And obviously when
you google it the original Bone War which, again the
extremely immature part of my brain needed to have a
solid giggle before I started looking at anything real. But
then I learned about the as as you reference, the
fathers of paleontology are our two friends Edward Dink Drinker Cope, right,
(26:26):
and who's our other friend here, marsh Carls Marsh oath
Neil Charles March. I love the name oth Neil. It's
coming back, It's it's it's it's on the rise.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Babies last year were named We're named No. I just.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
I was like, what I wish?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
And when you look up oth Neil, he looks like
an oath need oh he kind of he kind of
looks like a potato, but like an old potato that's
been sitting for a while, where it's like instead of
like roots coming down, it's like this big kind of
bushy beard situation, these little squinty as he literally just
looks like a really old potato Neil, don't you think.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Like Cope is kind of like like he could get it.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Cope is kind of a stud on the other side,
which I get why Marsh was. Maybe that's the root
of it. So I was roaming about them. So Marsh
was born.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Up Cope to see what he looks like.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
So Marsh was born in eighteen thirty one. Cope was
born seven years later, so they're both born before the
Civil War. I think Marsh is an interesting history where
he was born on a small farm in New York
and didn't have much. His mother died young. His father
tried to start a lot of businesses. None of them
went well. The father didn't do so well. Luckily he
(27:44):
had an uncle Warbucks also known as George Peabody, who
is the p of JP Morgan. And obviously George Peabody
did okay and became the philanthropist of like the daddy
of philanthropy, and luckily Marsh was one of the things
that he was like, I'll invest in you. So even
though Marsh's father really wanted him to stay and take
(28:04):
over the farm. He was like, Dad, you're a loser.
I'm gonna go with my uncle, who's super rich and
is basically paid for Yale at this point was like
installed a museum at Yale. And at that point I
guess there was no Paleontology wasn't a thing. But Marsh showed,
you know, he was an interest in science at our
young age, and his uncle took an interest, so he
(28:25):
paid for his studies. He ended up going to school
in Germany, which is then where he met Cope because
they both were studying in Germany slash dodging the Civil War,
like and the more I read about them, it's really
that's kind of how it went because then like Cope also,
so he was born to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania
who also they wanted him to go into the family business,
(28:47):
but they also took him to me They made the
mistake of taking him to cool natural history museums, and
he got really into that. So both of them were
studying in Germany at the same time, slash dodging the
Civil War, and they sort of hung out there studying
luckily until magically the war was over, and then they
were like, great, I finished my studies, I can come
home now, and they kind of became friends. I guess
when you look at the correspondence, Cope liked Marsh a
(29:09):
lot more than Marsh, like Cope, I believe, like Cope
was like, he's a great guy, and Marsh was like
he's tolerable. Like but then again, everything I've read about Marsh,
he was kind of like a jerk anyway, Like nobody
seemed to like him very much, Like he was cold,
he was distant.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Were they I've the quote I got back that is
that he's the Regina George of fossils.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
He kind of ease and he's such a shady bit
like he is the root. Because I think they probably
would have been great buddies had Marsh not been super shady.
So Cope came back. I think what I gather is
they're like Alphaba and Glinda, right, Like Cope kind of
was Alphabet. He was the one who wasn't a good
people person, but he genuinely was super smart and worked
(29:52):
really hard and had a real passion for this. And
Marsh was like Glinda. He was really good at spinning
the media and riding other people's coat tails and was
like kind of smart so and again and correct me
if I'm wrong, but he so. Anyway, so they come back.
Cope ends up working in New Jersey and where they
you know, this huge dig and he invites as a
(30:12):
reciprocal gesture, invites marsh along at some point to study
and who was his Cope was working with his mentor,
letle litel Lydell Lydell, and he was like, thank you.
So they were working in New Jersey they found this
dig and Cope invited Marshall and he was like, come
(30:34):
look at these dinosaurs we found and it seemed pretty
copa setic there for a while, and then they all
left and Cope before he went back to keep digging
and finding fossils, marsh snuck back and he bribed the
owner of the quarry to then give him any fossils
that were found. So then Cope goes back and like
marsh had all the fossils. That kind of stole things
(30:55):
from under his like from behind his back, which so
shady move number one. Really that should have done it.
But again Cope is not a horrible guy, but they
did sort of passive aggressive stuff after that.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Right because the should both have teamed up when really
they didn't.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
That's the thing, because they both had a lot of resources,
and they both were equally smart, and they seem to
be the two that were really leading the charge on
this on paleontology in general when it was just a
baby butting field. But instead, yeah, they turn on each
other because Marsh did dumb things like steal fossils from Cope,
like go behind his back to bribe people to get fossils,
and poor Copes just like now and then poor sweet Cope.
(31:30):
I think another downfall for him was he tended to
rush things right.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Poor hot so oh I did?
Speaker 3 (31:40):
He has the cool like hipster mustache that people try
to have right now.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Yes, and I feel like he would be do you
guys follow there's like an Instagram account that's like hot
Victorian men.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Of course, do you really?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yes, I know exactly, maybe God on that and I
think he.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Has been No, it's my Daguera type boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Oh there's another one. Then I think that's just called
like Hotti's a Victorian era something like that.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, so anyway, so Cope, he would be on there.
So Handsome Cope, Sweet Handsome Cope finds so actually, in
the meantime, too. They've found things and they've named things
after each other. And I found one person who said
it was out of them being friendly, like, oh, look
at this cool discovery. I'm going to name it after
(32:28):
my friend. But then when you look at what they were.
One was like a really fierce serpent, and Cope was like,
I'm going to name it after Marsh And it's like
so he's essentially calling him a snake, and Marsh like
named Cope after this like little like salamander thing, and
he was just like, yeah, you're basically like a little worm.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Like.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
I think it was actually really passive aggressive naming. I
think it was just like really intellectual passive aggressiveness.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
It's like how to be Caddy back in the Victorian era.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Basically, I'm gonna have this really long Latin name that
the root of it is you y. So then sweet
Cope discovers a creature and he's putting it together right
and he and unfortunately he puts the head on the
tail and again because he's rushing, and so he oh,
you have it right there. What's the name of that
(33:15):
dinosaur again?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So this is a plesiosaur. It's a Lasmosaurus.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
The Locknus monster.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, it actually does look like the last Luckness monster.
So he wrote this whole thing in the American Philosophical
Society and he presented it and of course he put
the head on the tail instead of on the neck,
and so I have a feeling everybody there was like
he got it wrong. But then marsh was the one
to point it out. And then Marsh like very publicly
(33:44):
pointed out his blub and then he wouldn't let Cope
live it down for basically the rest of their careers.
That Cope made this big error where he put the
head on the butt. It basically he was the biggest
butt head in paleontology at the moment.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
It's such an interesting time in paleontology because like, our
knowledge of things now is so much better because it's
it's hindsight, right, So hindsight's twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
You're like, yeah, why did they do that?
Speaker 4 (34:08):
But you look at the skeleton and you've never seen
an animal with a neck that long, So why would
you think it would be?
Speaker 3 (34:14):
You know, and how would everybody else there? Because they
did read that. It was like an awkward moment. So
a lot of it wasn't just March, Like a lot
of them there noticed it pretty quickly that the head
was on the tail. How would you even know, though,
like just by looking at it, Like they said, just
by looking at it they knew. Yeah, and that they said,
he was just rushing to get it done.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, that's one hundred percent true.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
And they you know, they had knowledge of anatomy, and
so when you look at backbones like vertebrae, they go
a certain way, like if you put them back, so
they yeah, it was definitely a rush job.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
So then, bless his heart, like he went out and
he tried to buy every copy of the magazine to
be like no, no, no, no, no no no. And
he obviously didn't buy enough because a lot of them
were still out there. So yeah, and from then on
they were quote bitter Emmys.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yeah, because he was a bitchy, because marsh was such
a bitch.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
So then after that, so then they went off to
the Midwest, and the two of them, I mean, it's
almost good and bad that they were rivals, right because
then it became this race to see who could find
the most and coolest, the mostest and bestest fossils in America.
And they each had their teams, and actually, thanks to
their feud, we found hundreds of fossils because the two
(35:25):
of them were basically constantly racing each other, yeah, to
find as many as possible, And they took paleontology to
the giantly Oh sorry the ten minutes. So I was
just so about some of the caddy things they did. So,
so Marsh sent spies into Cope's team that would like
report back and purposely sabotage some of his digs and
(35:47):
like right back to Marsh and telling what they were finding. Yeah,
And then Cope, like Cope would do things like he
would take detailed notes of everything Marsh did wrong. Every
time March screwed up Cope, it kept very detailed notes
about it. But a really messed up thing they did,
which is a really sad thing, is if one like
ran out of funding while still on a dig and
(36:08):
he knew the other one was going to swoop in
and take it, they would just destroy everything they couldn't take, yes,
so that the other one couldn't get it. So god
knows what they ended up destroying so that the other
one couldn't get it. But then when it really came
to a head, that was Marsh then got in with
the government because he obviously had better connections because of
Daddy Warbucks, Daddy Peabody, and so he ended up getting
in with the Feds and getting a government job. And
(36:31):
finally the good thing I suppose with that is getting
paleontology recognized by the federal government. But what he did then,
and at this point too, their obsessions had driven them,
you know, in pretty bad places. Cope at this point
was divorced, his wife had left him, he had no money,
he was living in a small apartment, and all he
had left were his fossils. Right at this point in
his career. It's later in his career, and Marsh tried
(36:53):
to basically not through him, but through one of the
secretaries with the President, take his fossils, because he he
used federal funding to get them, and he knew that
all Cope had left to his name was these fossils.
And Marsha was like, screw you, I'm going to take
them because I have the government on my side. So
he tries to seize them. Cope, of course, because not
only did he keep detailed notes of Marsh's mistakes, but
(37:15):
he also kept detailed notes with funding turns out he
spent almost all of his own money to buy them
and to fund these expeditions millions of dollars in today's money,
which he didn't have, which is why he was broke.
So luckily he managed to keep most of them, and
to retaliate, he sent a very detailed basically wrote a
detailed essay essentially explaining how horrible marshes to the New
(37:37):
York Herald, who then was like, Wade, it's sort of
backfired because the writer was like, I know, I'm going
to turn this on both of them, and the headline
was scientists wage bitter warfare, and it set off this
two week public battle because then, of course Marsh wrote
back and he was like, this isn't true, and the
two of them had this very public hissy fit fight
(37:58):
about each other, and then it ended up winning both
of their careers because the publicity was so bad that
Marsh ended up losing his job, the FEDS ended up
putting all their fund pulling all their funding for paleontology,
and they both ended up dying within a couple of
years of each other, essentially broke and discredited in a
lot of ways, which is really sad. They let their
(38:19):
obsessions sort of completely cloud their careers. I mean, look,
I and they died young too. They weren't that old.
They one was fifty six, one was sixty seven, Like
they were like old old men, and they both died penniless,
alone and with not much around them except for a
bunch of apostles.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I mean, we can take notes from that, you know,
like in paleontology now, So because of that, you know,
mainly it's like we all work together. There's many different
museums that like we share the same lands, Like we
all know the story of how these two bitter rivals
basically like threw each other under the bus until they died.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, truly, it was like first I was trying to
one up each other on discoveries, and then it became
upping each other on ruining their lives. Yeah, like it's
just it's really sad actually, because they're two such brilliant
men in your right. If only they had teamed up,
what they could have done.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, they could have teamed up.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
They could have divided and conquered. But I blame testosterone.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
I feel like a thousand women, one was an angry
potato when the other one was jealous, like it's it's
a really sad story. Yeah, yeah, the one he died Marsh,
who again he had so much, he had all the money,
he had the connections. He died with one hundred and
eighty six dollars in his bank account. Because at least,
like Cope, ended up selling off a lot of his
(39:34):
fossils to a private investor. Yeah, and Marsh at least
then he died, though the bulk of his went to
the Peabody Museum at Yale because obviously his uncle paid
for it. Yes, so at least like a lot of
his collection was saved.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
In major shout out to the Yale Peabody Museum who
just underwent like the most fabulous renovation. So they renovated
their entire fossil gallery and they actually remounted his original
Brontosaurus skeleton.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
I also learned I have a personal connection with Marsh
a little bit. The first time that he really blew
up in the media, because apparently he was really great
at using the media in general, like he would have
killed in this day and age on social media, he'd
be the biggest dinosaur influencer. But his first time that
he really became like a dino influence service time was
because of Syracuse, New York, where I'm from. He was
(40:25):
the first one to become sort of a celebrity in
the field. And they thought they discovered a giant in
Anadaga County called the Anadaga Giant, which is where I'm from.
And he was the one that went up and debunked
it as a hoax. He's like, no, this isn't real.
This wasn't a real thing, and it became like headline
news everywhere, and that's how he first got his name
(40:45):
out there.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
That's cool. Was it a faked skeleton or something? What
was that?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah? So it was an enormous petrified man had been
dug up on a farm and Marsh spotted the hoax,
clear tool marks in crevices on the block of gyps
so he had just been carved and then put in
the ground.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
And then is this also known as the Cardiff Giant.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
No, that's in the Cardiff Giant is in Cardiff, that's
in the UK. Okay, Yeah, that's a different one. This
was clearly like somebody made a big like stone man
and then stuck him underground and then dug him up.
And Marsh was the one that was like that looks
like a chisel. I'm pretty sure this was not carved,
(41:27):
but it, but it was headline news and he became
the cool hot palaeontologist.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Ironically, he was not the hot one of the two, but.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
He was.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
That was definitely a cop. So anyway, that's that's the
story of the original the the og bone War guys,
And you're right, it is pure testosterone and appropriately called
bone Wars because it does sound like it was just
like a giant pissing contest between the two of them.
They were standing at urinals. It probably started at urinals.
They were standing at two urnals. They got on all
well until they were New Jersey peeing, and then they
(41:59):
glanced over and then it was just like done from there.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
So I love the story about the newspaper how Cope
tried to go get all of them and tried to
burn them. And thank god social media wasn't around at
the time because it spread so much faster and uh
my god. But what I was going to say is
Mary Anning, who is basically the first recognized paleontologist, was
(42:24):
in England and she was born in seventeen ninety nine,
and she died in eighteen forty seven, So had they
paid attention to what was happening in England, they would
have learned more about what pleasosaurs looked like because she
was actually the first woman, first person to find pleasiosaurs.
And again that's the one that they put the heat
(42:46):
on the butt. So I mean, long story short, just
like listen to women.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Here we go, all right, Well, the time has come
as to which which one of us you would choose
as a winner? Whatever that?
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Oh man, you know you guys, you both did such
an amazing job. I mean, Ryan's dealing with like renovations
behind him, so yeah, a plus for being like sort
of you know, in chaos over there.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
But I feel like Michael's the winner on this one.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
Is it because we bonded over cemeteries? Ah?
Speaker 4 (43:23):
You know, it doesn't hurt, but I know, but your
narrative of the whole thing was very good. It's very
very thorough and I like the the.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
What do you call it comparison to Alphaba And.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
If only they these two came together at the end,
I wonder if they had their moment, if you know Wicked,
the musical they come back together at the very end
of the show and sing that song like I have
been changed for good. I think we really hope that
that happened for them, that like before they died broken penniless,
they had a moment where they were like, you know what.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
Maybe afterlife they've made up and their they're bone hunting
in the sky, I hope.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
So all right, well, thank you, and what is our
topic for next week?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
So this was fabulous?
Speaker 4 (44:11):
So you guys did a great job on both Stan
and Sue, one of the most controversial topics in paleontology,
and for the bone wars, which is the most famous
I think sort of part of paleontology history. But as
a spooky girly, my next topic for you guys is ghosts.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Great, totally random, I always into doing this, but I
talked about quantum sciences and quantum like realms and the
fact that it's not a fact, but there is good
papers on it around the fact that consciousness is potentially
actually a quantum behavior and if you start to think
(44:57):
about the fact that that there's layering of realities that
it is, you start to get into what could be
an explanation for ghosts, which I think is interesting. I
don't know if I'll focus on that, but that's uh,
it's a fun nerd out on it.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Oh, it's super cool.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
And I'm of the mind where we are still learning
about the world like you, and we're like we're trying
to pin down these things that people are for real experiencing,
Like there are people who swear up and down you
know this happened to them, and you can't decredit that
many people, So it's like, what is really going on?
Speaker 3 (45:37):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Oh, I'm so excited. Fun, this is great.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
All right, Well thank the cemetery.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yes, and remind people where they can follow you and
where they can buy your books. Your books look lovely.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, So I have I have three books.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
I have my first one, which is Fossils for Kids,
my second one, which I wrote with my husband called
Gems Kids, and then my third one is Prehistoric Worlds
from d K. And they famously did eyewitness books. Do
you know, do you remember eyewitness books? They were like
the big books with like lots of pictures, so I
(46:14):
grew up on those. So I was super excited to
be published by them. But you can buy them wherever
books are sold. Try to support local bookshops, but of
course they're available on many online retailers. People can follow me,
so I have social media presence as well, where I
post pictures and things about both my life and paleontology.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
You get a lot of cats in there too. You
can follow me on Instagram at Lady Naturalist.
Speaker 4 (46:37):
It's at Lady Underscore Naturalist, and then on Blue Sky
at Lady Naturalist and X is at Lady Naturalists.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
So awesome, awesome.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
Yeah, So if you like dinosaurs and all things paleontology,
give me a follow. And it's been a pleasure meeting
you guys, and I hope we can keep in touch.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Too, and I hope people come visit you and Sue
while she's there.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, visits the t rocks at Museum of the Rockies.
And it'll be here through September.
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