magnifier
Image
magbottom
 
Yale University professor of paleontology Othniel Marsh, circa 1880.
Close Window

Black and white photograph of a balding, bearded man wearing a suit.

Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection.

One of the nation's great bone hunters, Othniel Marsh played a pivotal role in establishing the fossil evidence for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Appointed the nation's first professor of paleontology by Yale University in 1866, Marsh competed fiercely with Edward Drinker Cope of the University of Pennsylvania in the so-called Bone Wars of the late 1800s. Together, Marsh and Cope discovered and documented more than 120 new species of dinosaur.

Back to Top