The Friends of Charles Darwin

Many Americans ventured west during the mid-1800s in search of riches and a new beginning. The westward journeys of Othniel Charles Marsh 1860 had much in common with those of speculators. He travelled with William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, faced a Sioux chief, and engaged in a long and bitter feud with a rival over claims. But Marsh sifted soil and river beds for dinosaur fossils, not gold. In his 66 years, Marsh established American paleontology and classified over 70 dinosaur species. Although his career was scarred by a petty dispute with his rival, Philadelphia paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, Marsh accrued many fossils and artifacts, literally adding tons of fossils to the Yale Peabody Museum's collection… After receiving a copy of the work, Charles Darwin wrote a letter to Marsh Aug. 31, 1880, stating, "Your work on these old birds, and on many fossil animals of North America, has afforded the best support to the theory of Evolution, which has appeared within the last twenty years."