Includes bibliographical references (pages 132-143) and index.

The prodigy -- The professor -- A theft -- An "abominable volume" and a hat full of bones -- A mistake -- This country of big things -- Hi toned for a bone sharp -- Hydra-headed -- Wariness and controversy -- Another name for truth -- Obediant servants -- Scientific smackdown.

"Tells the story of the feverish race between two ... competitive scientists--Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh--to uncover [dinosaur] fossils in the newly opened Wild West. Between them, they discovered dozens of major dinosaur species and established the new discipline of paleontology in America. But their bitter thirty-year rivalry--a 'war' waged on wild plains and mountains, in tabloid newsprint, and in Congress--dramatically wrecked their professional and private lives even as it brought alive for the public a vanished prehistoric world"--Dust jacket flap.