(Professor Marsh thinks one of these stories is not true because it contradicts scientific fact. But the medium of choice allows this to be a fast-paced telling, and there are stunning sequences rendering two Native American legends about the ancient bones.
(“Publish or perish” indeed!)Īs this is a comic book rather than a full scholarly history, some events have been invented to move the story along, and others tied up more neatly than they were in real life. This includes the story of the brontosaur, a dinosaur accidentally created when the wrong skull was placed on a skeleton due to the need for hasty publishing to ensure staying in the public eye. Knight, whose pictures helped shape the way we see dinosaurs to this day. The story also delves a bit into the career of artist Charles R.
The meat of the story is the rivalry between Professor Marsh and Professor Edward Drinker Cope as they competed for the best fossil finds, and the funding and recognition of the scientific community of the late Nineteenth Century. Not that this is going to stop Barnum one little bit.īut Barnum’s antics are a sideshow here. Barnum shows off his newest acquisition, the “Cardiff Giant.” Marsh is not impressed, as he knows this is a copy, and he is convinced the original giant was a fake to begin with. Marsh, a paleontologist, and showman P.T. Science is making great steps forward, but so is entrepreneurship, seeking any way to make a fast buck. It is the Gilded Age, a time of prosperity for some, and the advancement of knowledge. Also NBD just some staggeringly ambitious re-creations of Knight's dinosaurs throughout.įirst read November 2006, re-read September 2015. Terrific sepia-toned art throughout that manages to capture the period and the people. I also love the presentation in this one. I'm still calling it non-fiction: most of the made-up stuff is either specifics of conversations no one wrote down, meetings that probably didn't happen but the effect is the same, or (my favorite) the choice to show Cope with a more minimal facial hair style he didn't actually have until later in life (to avoid confusion between his appearance and Marsh's full beard). We learn a lot about the people, but it's also clear what is fact and what is speculation (or outright fiction) that serves the higher story. Jim Ottaviani does his usual mountain of research here to put it all together. The paleontologists had the bones, but it took the right kind of artist to add the flesh and the life. Also covers Charles Knight, the artist who developed early conceptions about what dinosaurs looked like. Really interesting tale of Marsh and Cope, two prominent late-19th-century fossil hunters and the scientific and popular feud between them. It's been almost ten years between reads but as good as I remembered it.
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