Dinosaur Wars is a documentary that was aired on January 17, 2011, by American Experience. It narrates the story of two US paleontologists, Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, who waged over fossils of dinosaurs in the American West. According to the film, western North America was a significant region for finding fossils (Dinosaur Wars). One reason for this is that the great desert environments in western Utah prevent animal remains from being covered by plant matter. Additionally, the surrounding does not have soil, trees, rock, and sand, making it easy for archeologists to find a mineralized dinosaur. The rising mountains in the site have sedimentary rocks formed from compressed clay and silt layers that have been laid down over time. Moreover, dinosaur carcasses tend to collect in places where a prehistoric waterway became shallow or curved, allowing bodies to pile and be preserved together (Dinosaur Wars). The coast of North America has waterways that carry remains, such as animal material from ancient ecosystems, which had been buried underneath.
I believe the field of paleontology became better because of the activities of Marsh and Cope. The paleontologists influenced American science, which grew into a quintessentially robust and cutthroat enterprise. They launched the love of America for dinosaurs and a prehistoric past that ensures to this day. Within the West’s varied and extensive fossil fields was a chance for an archeologist to explain how life began on earth (Dinosaur Wars). March and Cope competed for over thirty years to get this distinction, and they laid the basis of modern paleontology. They ruined each other, and none of them came to see his lifetime work complete and discovered by the public. However, museums mounted the fossil skeletons they collected for over thirty years on public displays after their death. Following this, dinosaur diaries became accessible to the public which is continually being enthralled by generation after generation.
Work Cited
Dinosaur Wars. Directed by Mark J. Davis. American Experience, 2011.