Othniel Charles Marsh

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The American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) discovered extinct birds with teeth, the Dinocerata, a kind of missing link between the reptiles and the birds, and traced the development of the modern horse.

On Oct. 29, 1831, O. C. Marsh was born in Lockport, N. Y. He graduated from Yale College in 1860. In 1860-1861 he pursued graduate studies in the Yale Scientific School and then spent 3 years in study at Berlin, Breslau, and Heidelberg. In 1866 he was appointed to the chair of paleontology at Yale, the first such chair to be established in America. Marsh held this position, which carried no teaching duties and no salary until 1896, for the rest of his life. He was aided financially by an inheritance from his uncle George Peabody, whom he induced to establish the Peabody Museum at Yale, which Marsh headed.

In 1870 Marsh organized the first of his Yale scientific expeditions, to the fossil-rich West. The first year they explored the Pliocene deposits of Nebraska and the Miocene of northern Colorado, crossed over the Bridger Basin in Wyoming, and then went southward into California. A succession of such expeditions followed throughout the 1870s. Marsh published his findings in a series of volumes on toothed birds and North American dinosaurs.

In 1882, following a major reorganization of the Federal surveys, Marsh was appointed vertebrate paleontologist to the U. S. Geological Survey. This position gave him first choice of the wealth of specimens being brought in by government surveying parties. Thereafter the fossils came into his museum faster than he could study them, and an immense pile remained unclassified at his death.

Marsh is given credit for putting the collection and preparation of vertebrate fossils upon a truly scientific basis. Always a careful worker, he was responsible for the complete reconstruction of a great many extinct animals, including a large number of dinosaurs found near Laramie, Wyo., the greatest dinosaur boneyard in the world.

Despite his nasty temperament and his often unscrupulous means of dealing with rivals and subordinates, Marsh was widely honored in the scientific world. He was president of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (1883-1895), and he received the Bigsby Medal from the Geological Society of London (1877) and the Cuvier Prize from the French Academy. He died on March 18, 1899.

Further Reading

The only biography of Marsh is Charles Schuchert and Clara MaeLeVene, O. C. Marsh, Pioneer in Paleontology (1940). The authors, Marsh's successor as director of the Peabody Museum and the museum librarian, deal admirably with his career and scientific work.

Additional Sources

Lanham, Url, The bone hunters: the heroic age of paleontology in the American West, New York: Dover Publications, 1991.

McCarren, Mark J., The scientific contributions of Othniel Charles Marsh: birds, bones, and brontotheres, New Haven, Conn.: Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, c1993.

Schuchert, Charles, O. C. Marsh: pioneer in paleontology, New York: Arno Press, 1978, 1940.

Othniel Charles Marsh
Born	October 29, 1831(1831-10-29) Lockport, New York, USA
Died	March 18, 1899 (aged 67) New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Nationality	United States
Institutions	Yale University
Alma mater	Yale College University of Heidelberg Harvard University

Othniel Charles Marsh (October 29, 1831 – March 18, 1899) was one of the pre-eminent paleontologists of the 19th century, who discovered and named many fossils found in the American West.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Career 2 Citations 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Early life

Marsh was born in Lockport, New York, in the United States into a family of modest means. However, he was the nephew of the very wealthy banker and philanthropist, George Peabody. He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover in 1856 and Yale College in 1860,^[1] and studied geology and mineralogy in the Sheffield Scientific School, New Haven, and afterwards paleontology and anatomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Breslau. He returned to the United States in 1866 and was appointed professor of vertebrate paleontology at Yale University. He persuaded his uncle George Peabody to establish the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale.

Career

Marsh and his many fossil hunters were able to uncover about 500 new species of fossil animals, which were all named later by Marsh himself. In May 1871, Marsh uncovered the first pterosaur fossils found in America. He also found early horses, flying reptiles, the Cretaceous and Jurassic dinosaurs; Apatosaurus and Allosaurus, and described the toothed birds of the Cretaceous; Ichthyornis and Hesperornis.

Othniel Marsh (center, back row) and assistants ready for digging.

Marsh named the following dinosaur genera: Allosaurus (1877), Ammosaurus (1890), Anchisaurus (1885), Apatosaurus (1877), Atlantosaurus (1877), Barosaurus (1890), Camptosaurus (1885), Ceratops (1888), Ceratosaurus (1884), Claosaurus (1890), Coelurus (1879), Creosaurus (1878), Diplodocus (1878), Diracodon (1881), Dryosaurus (1894), Dryptosaurus (1877), Labrosaurus (1896), Laosaurus (1878), Nanosaurus (1877), Nodosaurus (1889), Ornithomimus (1890), Pleurocoelus (1891), Priconodon (1888), Stegosaurus (1877), Torosaurus (1891), Triceratops (1889), Tripriodon (1889). He named the suborders Ceratopsia (1890), Ceratosauria (1884), Ornithopoda (1881), Stegosauria (1877), and Theropoda. He also named the families Allosauridae (1878), Anchisauridae (1885), Camptosauridae (1885), Ceratopsidae (1890), Ceratosauridae, Coeluridae, Diplodocidae (1884), Dryptosauridae (1890), Nodosauridae (1890), Ornithomimidae (1890), Plateosauridae (1895), and Stegosauridae (1880). He also named many individual species of dinosaurs. The dinosaur Othnielia was named in 1977 by P. Galton as a tribute to Marsh, as was Marshosaurus bicentesmus (Madsen, 1976).^[2]

Marsh is also known for the so-called Bone Wars waged against Edward Drinker Cope. The two men were fiercely competitive, discovering and documenting more than 120 new species of dinosaur between them. Marsh eventually won the Bone Wars by finding 80 new species of dinosaur, while Cope only found 56.

Marsh died in 1899 and was interred at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.

Citations

1. ^ "Staff, Professor Marsh is Dead". http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9806E5D91730E132A2575AC1A9659C94689ED7CF&oref=slogin. 
2. ^ "Marsh, Othniel". http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/glossary/Paleontologists.shtml#Marsh. 

References

• Staff (1899-03-19). "Professor Marsh is Dead: The World-Famous Geologist Succumbs to Pneumonia". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9806E5D91730E132A2575AC1A9659C94689ED7CF&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2008-09-01. 
• University of California Museum of Paleontology. "Othniel Charles Marsh (1832-1899)". UC Berkeley. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/marsh.html. Retrieved 2007-03-07. 
• "Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899)". Lefalophodon. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~alroy/lefa/Marsh.html. Retrieved 2007-03-07. 

The Scientific Contributions of Othniel Charles Marsh: Birds, Bones, and Brontotheres (Peabody Museum of Natural History Special Publication No 15) (Paperback) by Mark J. McCarren

External links

 "Marsh, Othniel Charles". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 

• O.C. Marsh papers

v • d • e Presidents of the National Academy of Sciences Alexander Bache (1863) · Joseph Henry (1868) · William Rogers (1879) · Othniel Marsh (1883) · Wolcott Gibbs (1895) · Alexander Agassiz (1901) · Ira Remsen (1907) · William H. Welch (1913) · Charles Walcott (1917) · Albert Michelson (1923) · Thomas Morgan (1927) · William Campbell (1931) · Frank Lillie (1935) · Frank B. Jewett (1939) · Alfred Richards (1947) · Detlev Bronk (1950) · Frederick Seitz (1962) · Philip Handler (1969) · Frank Press (1981) · Bruce Alberts (1993) · Ralph J. Cicerone (2005)

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