Too Big to Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs. Brian Ford J.

      William Foulke’s discovery of this Hadrosaurus skeleton in 1858 launched the search for dinosaurs in the United States. When the fossil was reconstructed 10 years later, it became the first dinosaur skeleton to be put on public display.

      The money they collected was enough to construct a building that was twice the size, and this is the museum that still stands today at 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It retains much of the original architectural detail, including the galleries with their fin de siècle balustrades and the fine brick and stone façade. This is a museum that has blended modernity with tradition, unlike some others (London’s Natural History Museum being a case in point) where the dinosaur gallery has become a dimly lit children’s theme park. The Philadelphia dinosaur became world-renowned, and it remained the only fossil dinosaur on public exhibition until 1871, when a duplicate plaster copy was erected in Central Park, New York City, as a public attraction. However, the organizers had not reckoned with William Magear Tweed, an influential New York politician. Tweed was a corrupt property developer. Before he was 30, he had been elected to the House of Representatives and, although he never qualified in law, he managed to have himself certified as an attorney and set about extracting protection money from everyone he could. He was appointed to the New York Senate and was repeatedly arrested and freed, sometimes escaping from custody, and was sustained by the support of an adoring public. Tweed became known as ‘Boss’ and was deeply dishonest – he seemed to have a hand in every commercial deal in the city and soon became the third-largest landowner in New York City. Although his proclaimed wealth was largely an invention, he had himself appointed to the board of a railroad company, a major bank, a luxury hotel and a printing company; little commercial development took place in the city in which his corruption did not play a part (some readers may recognize a pattern here that makes America in 2018 seem tame by comparison). ‘Boss’ Tweed took a poor view of the new dinosaur display because he was unable to persuade the proprietors to pay protection money, so he secretly ordered the destruction of the plaster skeleton. No sooner had installation work finished than the entire skeleton was smashed to pieces and thrown into the nearby lake by his henchmen. Thus, the second dinosaur skeleton to go on display anywhere in the world fell victim to big-city corruption. Six years later, another of the casts was shipped to Scotland for display in the National Museum in Edinburgh. Fortunately, it was left unscathed and remains there to this day – the first dinosaur skeleton ever put on public display outside of the United States.4

      A cast of the dinosaur skeleton from Haddonfield stood at the heart of the centennial exhibition of scientific and industrial wonders held in 1876 in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, where it shared the stage with the world’s largest steam engine and the torch that had been manufactured in readiness for installation on the Statue of Liberty. Once again, it was a sensation. Two years later, another of the casts was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution, which displayed the world-famous skeleton outside its headquarters. Another cast was bought by Princeton University and displayed in its Nassau Hall. Hadrosaurus foulkii remained the only dinosaur put on public exhibition anywhere in the world until 1883, when a Belgian Iguanodon skeleton went on display in Brussels. This was to correct a mistake Mantell had made when the first fossils were excavated – the horn he had assumed went on the snout was actually situated on the wrist, somewhat like a spiked thumb. Artists using the standard drawings as a reference for their own impressions of dinosaurs took longer to adapt; as we shall see, there was still a horn appearing on the snout of an iguanodon as late as the 1960s.

      A problem soon emerged. These skeletons were all installed in an imposing upright position, with the tail resting on the ground, as a standard, terrestrial creature. But over the following decades, as palæontologists considered their findings, it was realized that the upright position was impossible – although innumerable footprints of dinosaurs like this were being discovered, there was never any sign of an impression left by the tail. Clearly, the tail of a dinosaur never touched the ground. And so, since the 1990s, dinosaur skeletons have been reconfigured with the tails held aloft. There are still some in the former, upright stance (there is one example in the State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey, and another in the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge University), but the fossil evidence has proved that this upright stance is impossible. The hadrosaur that Foulkes discovered remains the only one anybody has found. Even though other duck-billed dinosaurs (collectively known as hadrosaurs) have since been found, there are no other specimens of the same strange species that he discovered. Furthermore, nobody knows quite what it looked like, for the skull was never located (the skeleton casts on display in museums use a manufactured skull shaped rather like that of an Iguanodon). The team at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia had made history by displaying this unique discovery. Just as the concrete sculptures of dinosaurs at the Crystal Palace had caught international attention, so had their exhibit of the first skeleton ever put on display.

      This was an exciting project, and one of the team, a young zoologist who had been a child prodigy, was destined to become their curator. He was 18 years old when the skeleton arrived at the Academy, and its majesty transfixed him. This teenager was Edward Drinker Cope, and he became one of the greatest dinosaur hunters of all time. Edward was the son of Alfred and Hanna Cope, a wealthy Quaker family who ran a shipping company and had emigrated from Germany. They were resident near Philadelphia when the young Cope was born on July 28, 1840. His mother died when he was 3 years old, and Rebecca Biddle became his stepmother. They looked to the future, and Edward was taught to read and write from an early age. The family made extensive visits to parks, zoological collections and museums, for this was how a youngster was prepared for a full and satisfying life in those days. Some of Edward’s childhood notebooks survive and they show a wide-ranging interest in natural history. He was also a capable artist. At the age of 12, he was sent to boarding school at West Chester, Pennsylvania, where he studied algebra and astronomy, chemistry and physiology, scripture, grammar and Latin. Looking back at those days, we can see that earlier generations had a tradition of learning instilled at an early age – yet Edward Cope would not study subjects he disliked. Penmanship was a lesson he found difficult, and indeed his handwriting throughout his adult life was often illegible. By 1855 he was back at home and became increasingly preoccupied by natural history. He had often been taken to the Academy of Natural Sciences, and by 1858 he was working there as a part-time assistant, cataloguing and classifying specimens in the collections, when Foulkes’ dinosaur skeleton arrived. This sowed a seed that would germinate in Cope’s later years. He was captivated by the prospect of investigating magnificent monsters from long-lost worlds.

      Later that year, far younger than you would expect a scientist to start