In December 1898, industrialist Andrew Carnegie was reading the New York Journal at his home in the Big Apple. “Most Colossal Animal Ever On Earth Just Found Out West,” declared the front-page headline, and an illustration of a large dinosaur standing on its back legs and peering into an eleventh-floor window of the New York Life Building accompanied the article. Carnegie was intrigued, and quickly wrote a note to William Jacob Holland, director of the recently formed Carnegie Museum of Natural History, that contained one simple question – “Can’t you buy this for Pittsburgh?”
With that query, the Steel City entered what has become known as the Second Bone Wars, with other academic institutions in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. competing against one another to secure the largest and best-preserved dinosaur remains in the country.
The initial Bone Wars erupted in 1877 with the discovery of fossilized dinosaurs in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh were the leading culprits in the ensuing battle of discovery, two paleontologists determined to get the upper hand on their rival by any means necessary, including theft, bribery and even the destruction of bones before their perceived adversary could exhume them.
The resulting “war” even led to personal attacks in scientific magazines as a way to discredit each other, as well as behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. The first Bone Wars financially and socially ruined both Cope and Marsh, but their contributions to the fields of paleontology and dinosaur studies were immense nonetheless, paving the way for future research and expeditions into the American Midwest.
It was William Reed who discovered the “most colossal animal ever on Earth” that caught the eye of Andrew Carnegie in December 1898, a native of Wyoming who eventually abandoned his job at the Union Pacific Railroad to work as a bone hunter for Othniel Marsh. Carnegie was sixty-three-years-old at the time and more interested, and was more interested in his family and philanthropic efforts than the business of manufacturing steel. He created the Carnegie Institute in 1895, which included a natural history museum, and hired William Holland – chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania, forerunner of the University of Pittsburgh – as museum director.
When the Carnegie Institute was dedicated in 1895, Carnegie invited Othniel Marsh to the ceremony, and even asked the veteran paleontologist to donate a dinosaur to the new museum. Marsh died before he was able to deliver on the request, but William Reed’s discovery in Wyoming offered a new opportunity for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to secure its own dinosaur.
Holland immediately contacted Reed once he received Carnegie’s missive, but Reed replied back that his find was not for sale. Or, rather, it was for sale, but to the highest bidder. To make matters slightly more complicated, William Reed worked for the University of Wyoming and although William Holland eventually came to terms with Reed, the Regents of the University insisted that the dinosaur bones belonged to them.
Holland attempted to use both financial payments and legal maneuvering – claiming a stake on the land courtesy of the Carnegie Museum – as well as political pressure to secure the fossilized remains for Pittsburgh. Despite a significant amount of money and effort, however, the point eventually proved moot. Reed’s discovery was nowhere near as large or complete as had been originally proclaimed, and the hunt for a complete skeleton on behalf of Andrew Carnegie continued.
By now the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago, and the U.S. National Museum at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. were likewise scouring the American Midwest in hunt for dinosaur bones. In his 2001 book Bone Wars: The Excavation of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur, Tom Rea recites the resulting competition while primarily focusing on William Holland and the team of bone hunters and paleontologists he assembled at the Carnegie Museum during the early part of the 1900s.
In March 1899, Holland traveled to New York City to meet with Dr. Jacob Wortman of the American Museum. Wortman had expected to fill Othniel Marsh’s position at Princeton University after Marsh’s death but was ultimately overlooked for the position. Holland immediately offered him the title of Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum instead. Wortman not only accepted, but brought with him another American Museum employee, Arthur Coggeshall, arguably the most skilled fossil restoration expert at the institution.
Both Wortman and Coggeshall soon joined William Reed and his son Willie in their bone hunting expeditions in Wyoming, splitting into teams to better explore multiple potential sites. It was during those efforts, on July 4, 1899, that Jacob Wortman unearthed partial remains of what he referred to as a “small Brontosaur.” William Holland, however, believed it a Diplodocus.
“Of the nature of the discovery, it is not time now to speak at length,” Holland told a Pittsburgh newspaper. “But it suffices to say, that from the present prospects, it appears that we shall become in all probability the possessors of one of the largest and possibly the most perfect skeleton hitherto found of a colossal dinosaur belonging to the genus Diplodocus, ‘a rare bird’ indeed, something which no museum in Europe possesses, and of which only fragments exist in American collections.”
William Holland eventually concluded that it was not a “small Brontosaur” that lay beneath the ground of Sheep Creek, Wyoming, but a Diplodocus instead. “Of the nature of the discovery, it is not time now to speak at length,” Holland told a Pittsburgh newspaper. “But it suffices to say, that from the present prospects, it appears that we shall become in all probability the possessors of one of the largest and possibly the most perfect skeleton hitherto found of a colossal dinosaur belonging to the genus Diplodocus, ‘a rare bird’ indeed, something which no museum in Europe possesses, and of which only fragments exist in American collections.”
Wortman still believed that the specimen was a Barosaurus and publicly stated this belief in an article published in the academic journal Science. The difference of opinion between the two men resulted in Jacob Wortman leaving the Carnegie Museum for Yale University after less than a year of service in Pittsburgh.
To replace Wortman, Holland visited Princeton University and their curator of vertebrate paleontology, John Bell Hatcher. Although Hatcher was just shy of his fortieth birthday, he was already considered an expert in the field and even discovered the first fossil remains of the rhinoceros-like Torosaurus in 1889.
Holland hired Hatcher as the Carnegie Museum’s Curator of Paleontology and Osteology and immediately sent him to Sheep Creek – now known as Camp Carnegie – to oversee the excavation of Jacob Wortman’s earlier discovery. It wasn’t long before additional Diplodocus remains were uncovered in the area that were even more complete than the original.
The bones were shipped by train to Pittsburgh, where Arthur Coggeshall began the painstaking task of restoring the fossils. John Hatcher, meanwhile, not only agreed with William Holland’s belief that the bones were those of a Diplodocus but further deduced that it was a new species of the dinosaur. In honor of Andrew Carnegie, Hatcher named the species Diplodocus carnegii.
The second Bone Wars may not have been as dramatic as the one waged by paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh decades earlier, but it had its fair share of intrigue just the same and ultimately proved successful for Andrew Carnegie, William Holland, and the Carnegie Museum, as well as the city of Pittsburgh.
Anthony Letizia