Background
Edward Drinker Cope was born on July 28, 1840, the eldest son of Alfred and Hanna Cope.
herpetologist Ichthyologist paleontologist comparative anatomist
Edward Drinker Cope was born on July 28, 1840, the eldest son of Alfred and Hanna Cope.
Edward Cope was educated by private tutors, and had one year of study at the University of Pennsylvania, and after further study and travel in Europe was in 1865 appointed curator to the Academy of Natural Sciences, a post which he held till 1873.
After a brief period at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, as professor of comparative zoology and botany (1864–67), Cope devoted 22 years to exploration and research. Most of this time was spent in the discovery and description of extinct fishes, reptiles, and mammals of the western United States, from Texas to Wyoming. He served as a paleontologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and, with Joseph Leidy, described the fossils collected by the Ferdinand Hayden Survey in Wyoming. He worked out the evolutionary histories of the horse and of mammalian teeth. A race with his colleague Othniel Marsh for priority in discovering American fossil dinosaurs culminated in a bitter feud that proved damaging to the reputations of both men.
Cope is most noted for his invaluable contribution to the knowledge of the vertebrates that flourished between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of man, a time span known then as the Tertiary Period of geologic time.
