Spotlight Day: Dinosaurs and the Bone Wars

Scandal! Treachery! Fortunes! Foul Play! Dinosaurs!

Join us on this spotlight day as we uncover the fascinating story behind the dinosaurs and their rediscovery. We will begin with presentations and have the opportunity to get hands on with real fossils to explore what makes a fossil a dinosaur and how to recognise them. 

We will also explore the fascinating story of the lives and shenanigans of Professors Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope as they excavated, published, and decried each other over several decades in what became known as the Bone Wars! 

There have been many scientists that have brought the dinosaurs to life but two rise above the rest from the beginning during the gilded age of science: both desperate to outdo each other to gain the prize of becoming Americas leading academic in the new subject of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

What started out as friendship then turned to rivalry before an all-consuming personal war of dirty tricks and scandalous newspaper headlines that damaged the reputations not only of the scientists involved but the entire scientific community of the young United States. 

Find out this fascinating story and much more as we spend the day exploring the fascinating world of palaeontology and two of its most colourful characters with our own resident dinosaur expert, Dino Dave.