Tooth and Claw: The Dinosaur Wars

Gr 7 Up--The conflict between two pioneering 19th-century scientists provides a framework for detailing the burgeoning scientific fields of evolutionary theory and paleontology in this accessible history for younger readers. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh came to their professional scientific careers in the wake of the U.S. Civil War from very distinct backgrounds and achieved prominence through different means, but they began work as contemporaries and affable colleagues and ended as bitter enemies. Noyes details Marsh and Cope's individual accomplishments, their feud and its repercussions, contemporary developments in the scientific community that impacted their work, and the popular interest in science that supported their research and gave an audience to their dispute. The discovery of troves of pre-historic bones in the opening American West provided an apt landscape upon which Marsh and Cope could act out their resentments toward each other, use the media to shape the public's understanding of dinosaurs and science as a discipline, and outline the direction of paleontology for generations to come. Detailed sidebars and insets give the history and science behind Cope and Marsh's work and the ways that the pair have influenced paleontology and scientific inquiry today. VERDICT An exciting retelling of the passionate rivalry between two researchers, and the dinosaurs that ignited their intellectual labors and fueled their conflict. Recommended for middle and high school nonfiction collections.--Kelly Kingrey-Edwards, Blinn Junior College, Brenham, TX

The title of this account aptly references both the breakthrough discoveries and the obsessive rivalry between two 19th-century American paleontologists. Born into a Quaker family in Philadelphia, Edward Cope was a self-taught prodigy with a passion for the natural sciences. While traveling in Europe, Cope met Othniel Charles Marsh, who would become Yale's first professor of paleontology, and the two bonded over their shared ambition--before "the blade of rivalry" severed their friendship. Noyes (The Magician and the Spirits) provides a snappily written account of the equally indomitable scientists' frenzied race to be the first to locate, excavate, and assemble dinosaur bones and name species. Laced with jealousy, betrayal, sabotage, and revenge, this quest brings them to various sites as their professional and personal enmity plays out in the press. The author provides insight into the rivals' outsize personalities and casts their story against the volatile political, territorial, and economic landscapes of the era. Still, while she acknowledges that white Americans were then conducting an "attack on the Plains Indians' way of life," her language veers into bias in places, generalizing the Crow as "congenial" and "peaceful" and some lands as "unknown terrain." Sidebars and cameos give the book additional historical context. Ages 10-up. (Apr.)