598 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



With Cope, Leidy, and Marsh all in the tield of vertebrate paleon- 

 tology at one time, it is not strange that a spirit of rivalry, if not of 

 personal jealousy, should have arisen. This found expression in 

 numerous instances which at this date are only amusing, however 

 serious they may at the time have seemed to those most interested. 

 Thus, Cope in 1868 deseribed and figured remains of a marine saurian 

 from the Cretaceous of Kansas, to which he gave the name of Elas- 

 mosaurm platyurus. Leidy, ever on the alert, made a reexamination 

 of the materials, and at the meeting of the Philadelphia Academy on 

 March 8, 1870, announced that the remains were, in reality, those of 

 an Enaliosaurian and closely allied to Plesiosaurus, and, further, that 

 Cope's error in identification lay in his having described the animal — 

 the skeleton of which was without a skull and quite incomplete — in a 

 reversed position from the true one." 



In 1873, with appropriations the same as 

 for the previous season, the tield of opera- 

 tions was transferred to Colorado, this in 

 part owing to the expense of transportation, 

 subsistence, and labor in regions so remote 

 as those of the upper Missouri, and in part to 

 the hostility of the Indians. 



Work of Hayden 



Survey in Colorado, 1 he party rendezvoused at 



1873=1876. mu 1 -A A 



Denver, lhe area decided 

 upon to be surveyed comprised the eastern 

 portion of the mountainous part of Colorado, 

 and was divided into three districts known 

 as the North, Middle, and Southern. The 

 personnel and their assignments were as 

 follows: 

 The first or Middle Park division, directed \>y A. R. Marvine, assist- 

 ant geologist, with Gr. R. Bechler, topographer, and S. B. Ladd, 

 assistant topographer. The second or South Park division, with 

 Henry Gannett as topographer in charge; Dr. A. C. Peale, geologist; 



"Another illustration of hasty work — in this case through fear of anticipation by 

 Marsh — is furnished by Cope while with the Hayden survey in Wyoming in this 

 year (1872). Finding certain fragmentary vertebrate remains which he believed to 

 represent new species, he actually sent the following telegram to the Philadelphia 

 Academy in order to secure priority of publication: 



Black Buttes, Wyoming, Aug. 17, 1872. 

 I have discovered in southern Wyoming the following species: 

 Loxolophodon Cope. Incis. 1, one canine tusk, pm. 4, with one crescent and inner 

 tubercle; molars 2, size gigantic. L. cornutvs, horns tripedral, cyliudrio; nasals 

 with short convex lobes. L. furcatus, nasals with long spatnlate lobes. /,. pressi- 

 cornis, horns compressed subacuminate. 



Edward D. Cope, 



U. S. Geological Surfey. 



Joseph Leidy. 



