Edward Drinker Cope

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Edward Drinker Cope

Edward Drinker Cope (born July 28, 1840 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † April 12, 1897 there ) worked as an American scientist in many zoological fields, such as B. the taxonomy of extinct vertebrates and paleontology , ichthyology ( ichthyology ), herpetology and mammalogy ( mammalology ), the theory of evolution and, last but not least, comparative anatomy .

life and work

Cope was born into a Quaker family in July 1840 . He was interested in natural history at an early age , and in 1859 he had the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia write a scientific paper on the family of salamanders (Salamandridae). At about the same time he became a member of the Megatherium Club of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington . He was trained partly at the University of Pennsylvania , partly while traveling in Europe. On August 14, 1865, he married his cousin Annie Pym.

The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia granted Cope the post of curator in 1865 , which he held until 1873. At Haverford College he was professor of natural history from 1864 to 1867. Since 1866 he was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1872, Cope was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1884 he became curator at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington and between 1889 and 1897 he was professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Pennsylvania, while from 1895 he also took over the professorship of zoology and comparative anatomy . In 1896 he became President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

Cope's specialty was studying American fossil vertebrates. From 1871 to 1877 he accompanied research trips into the Cretaceous layers of Kansas and in the Tertiary in Wyoming and Colorado . He described more than a thousand species and many genera of extinct vertebrates, including some of the oldest known mammals and 56 types of dinosaurs , e.g. B. Camarasaurus supremus and Coelophysis bauri . Cope wrote more than 1200 scientific papers. His long-running race with Othniel Charles Marsh to discover new dinosaur fossils and the resulting sometimes violent clashes was also known as " Bone Wars ". Cope participated in the US Geological Survey expeditions to New Mexico (1874), Montana (1875), Oregon and Texas (1877). He was a co-owner and co-author of the journal The American Naturalist from 1878 to 1897 .

In the summer of 1876, Cope began digging for dinosaur fossils not far from where the Battle of Little Bighorn had taken place just days earlier . One morning a group of Indians from the Crow tribe broke into his camp. Cope had just finished cleaning his dentures and was about to put them back in place. The Indians were so impressed that they even asked Cope to repeat the process. They believed teeth that could be removed and reinserted to be a powerful spell, and in the weeks that followed they provided Cope's excavation company with plenty of fish and game. In 1886 he was elected a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Cope died in his hometown of Philadelphia in April 1897 . He had previously determined that his body should be made available to science (Wistar Institute) because, in his opinion, his body was the type specimen, i.e. H. should represent the official standard of Homo sapiens . During the preparation and assembly of his body, however, signs of the onset of syphilis were discovered, so that contrary to its intended purpose, his body disappeared in the archive.

Cope first described 302 species of reptiles. The genus Copeina from the Schlanksalmler family is named after him.

Cope as a nomenclature type of Homo sapiens

In 1993, the well-known paleontologist and dinosaur expert Robert T. Bakker declared that he wanted to define Cope as a nomenclature type of Homo sapiens (i.e. modern humans) by means of "subsequent designation" of a lectotype based on his skull . As a great admirer of Cope, he wanted to comply with his last will. When Carl von Linné described man in the work Systema Naturae in 1758 , he did not refer to a specific individual as a scientific specimen copy as prescribed, because he was of the opinion that man was known to man ( "Homo nosce te ipsum" ) and therefore such a copy was not required. Bakker's determination is very doubtful for various reasons. In particular, William Thomas Stearn (1959, Systematic Zoology 8: 4-22) determined the skeleton of Carl von Linné himself as the lectotype for the species Homo sapiens . Bakker's justification for specifying the type also violates Article 75.3 of the International Rules for Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). In addition, Cope's skull can no longer be found in the museum collection in question. Incidentally, Bakker's intended type definition was never validly published by himself, but is only quoted in the book Hunting Dinosaurs by Psihoyo (1994). So Cope's remains are definitely not the valid type specimen of the human species.

Works

  • On the Method of Creation of Organic Types. M'Calla & Stavely, Philadelphia 1871.
  • Collected Papers in Geology and Paleontology. 1873-97.
  • On Some of Prof. Marsh's Criticisms. 1873.
  • On the Short-Footed Ungulata of the Eocene of Wyoming. Philadelphia 1873.
  • Sketch of the Zoology of Ohio. Philadelphia 1873.
  • On the Plagopterinae and the Ichthyology of Utah. 1874.
  • On the Geologic Age of the Vertebrate Fauna of the Eocene of New Mexico. 1876.
  • On a Carnivorous Dinosaurian from the Dakota Beds of Gold. 1877.
  • On the Effects of Impacts and Strains on the Feet of Mammalia. Philadelphia 1881.
  • The Origin of the Fittest. Macmillan & Appleton, London, New York 1887.
  • The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution. Open Court, Chicago, London 1896.
  • Syllabus of Lectures on the Vertebrata. Philadelphia 1898 pm
  • The Crocodilians, Lizards and Snakes of North America. Washington 1900 pm

literature

  • Michael Crichton : Dragon Teeth. Harper, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-06-247335-6 (novel).
  • Mark Jaffe: The Gilded Dinosaur. The Fossil War Between ED Cope and OC Marsh and the Rise of American science . Crown, New York 2000. ISBN 0-517-70760-8 .
  • Urless N. Lanham: The Bone Hunters. The Heroic Age of Paleontology in the American West . Dover, New York 1991. ISBN 0-486-26917-5 (Repr. Of the New York 1973 edition)
  • Henry F. Osborn: Cope, Master Naturalist. The Life and Letters of Edward Drinker Cope . University Press, Princeton, NJ 1931.
  • Henry F. Osborn: Impressions of Great Naturalists. Reminiscences of Darwin, Huxley, Balfour, Cope and Others . Scribner, New York 1924.
  • David R. Wallace: The Bonehunters' Revenge. Dinosaurs, Greed and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age . Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass. 1999. ISBN 0-395-85089-4 .
  • David S. Jordan: Leading American Men of Science . Holt, New York 1910.

Web links

Commons : Edward Drinker Cope  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Edward D. Cope. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 27, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Member entry by Edward Drinker Cope (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on February 6, 2016.
  3. ↑ Peter Uetz: The original descriptions of reptiles, Zootaxa , No. 2335, 2010, 59-68, pdf
  4. ↑ Axel Zarske: Copeina. In: Claus Schaefer, Torsten Schröer (Hrsg.): The large lexicon of aquaristics. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-7497-9 , p. 254.
  5. ↑ Homo sapiens lectotype
  6. ↑ Not my type
personal data
SURNAME Cope, Edward Drinker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist and zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, USA
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1897
Place of death Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, USA