I'm familiar with the history of the Bone Wars, but this telling was too hard to follow.

Two 19th century paleontologists, Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh, battled for scientific supremacy in the field of dinosaurs. The story is told in black and white comics with lively dialogue. The addition of a "Fact or Fiction?" section at the end clarifies where events were fudged a bit to make a better story, but the truth is often strange enough on its own. I preferred Ottaviani's biography of Niels Bohr, Suspended in Language, but Bone Sharps is accessible to a younger audience (meaning teens) and is more entertaining.

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A fun read about the early days of dinosaur-hunting in the wild and woolly West.

Incredibly brilliant art and who else would tell the true, Chabonish story of two fueding fossil hunters in the Wild West? Actually, that sounds a lot cooler when I say it that way. Maybe I should give it a 5 based on my own one sentence review.

To be honest, the story itself had some failings: Ottaviani took some unneccessary deviations from history (which, restoring my faith in him, he actually lists in the very end every single fact he flubbed - classier than Hollywood biopics ladies and gents) and some moments are very unclear. Certain characters look similar and start to swell together. It gets confusing at times, but moreso it actually ends dully in my opinion, putting a weak emphasis on the tertiary character.

While the artwork and writing is beautiful, the story is difficult to track, as it races and leaps across the US and even into Europe. The characters are introduced quickly in the beginning, then disappear for pages on end, only to make minor cameos later. The story is one peopled by a diverse wellspring of caricatures, making it understandably difficult to cut any of them out, but it would have made the story easier to follow. A story of hubris and jealousy, this is a wonderful book for those who love the more arcane parts of American history.

Couldn't keep the characters straight, story too complicated and boring. Nice art.

If you’ve not heard the tumultuous tales of the Bone Wars, settle in friend because do I have a story for you. The utterly batshit rivalry between paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the late 1800s was a whirlwind of theft, bribery, bombings, spies and more that led to tarnished reputations but also sparked the public interest in dinosaurs and fossil recovery and unlocked a wealth of knowledge on prehistoric life as the two men cataloged over a hundred new species of dinosaurs. Chronicling this bizarre and comically epic rivalry of the Gilded Age of Paleontology is this lovely graphic novel, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards by Jim Ottaviani with illustrations by Big Time Attic that opens up just how wild the Wild West was during this period. With an excellent aim to balance history and fun, the graphic novel takes great care to deliver the stranger-than-fiction story and ends with a “fact or fiction” segment to further delve into the most offbeat facts while also giving justification to the several fictional elements that were incorporated or streamlined from true events in order to tell a more compelling narrative. A lot of fun and quite the bizarre tale, lets take a look at the Bone Wars.
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At the start, Cope and Marsh had an amicable professional relationship. They even named species after each other like young lovers who, eventually because of rather conflicting personalities and a desire to be the best, would have quite a break-up where instead of throwing the other’s clothes out onto the street they were throwing whole ass dinosaur skeletons around and blowing up explosives to destroy any leftover fossils lest the other get ahold of them. The Bone Wars really kicked off in 1877 with the discovery of the Morrison Formation—a section of sedimentary rock from the Upper Jurassic period that has been the most fertile ground for finding dinosaur fossils in all of North America—when the man who discovered it alerted Marsh but also sent specimens to Cope after Marsh was slow to respond. Perturbed by Cope getting an upper hand, Marsh went west as well and the two frantically dug and published in order to be the center of attention and get their names on the most discoveries. These big egos lead to big discoveries but also to some big scandal where supposedly Marsh once stole a train full of dinosaurs, bribed Cope’s crew to work for him as double agents and even hired spies to collect intel on Cope. Some seriously divorced dick energy here.
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Marsh (left) and Cope (right)

Before these two began their one-upmanship of shade and scandal, only 9 dinosaurs had been discovered and named. By the end of the Bone Wars, Cope and Marsh had named 144 dinosaurs. Unfortunately most of these dinosaurs are no longer considered valid. Part of this is due to Cope being over eager to publish and rushing out studies that may not have been fully accurate, which any of us who have ever submitted a college essay at 11:59pm can probably relate to. Between 1879 and 1880 he published 76 academic papers for instance with over 1400 articles to his name during his lifetime and its a shame we can’t have him and Alexander Hamilton compete in some speed-essay contest. Marsh also just occasionally tossed skulls from other dig sites onto bodies found elsewhere and called it good, which was how we briefly thought the Brontosaurus wasn’t real (good news, after being declared a made-up dinosaur, a 2015 study has reinstated the belief that the Brontosaurus was real) and its possible both of them recombined bones just to get a leg up on the competition. Which is kind of hilarious toddler behavior, just mixing shit up and being like yep totally new beast!
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Wanting to ensure their rivalry was public, both men attacked each other in the press, such as Cope publishing an article of Marsh’s own employees grievances about him and both of them slandering the other like the tabloids. Marsh was given a position with the U.S. Geological Survey’s paleontology department, but after all the slander and scandal congress decided to cut their funding and kick Marsh to the curb. Cope didn’t get to laugh about it long though because his own reputation sucked so badly nobody would buy his dinosaurs and he soon died at the age of 56. Marsh would die two years later at the age of 67, probably pissy that Cope could claim first to die as a victory or something. Their rivalry was a mess but it really bolstered our knowledge of dinosaurs and that is cool. Except scientists have had to spend years figuring out which of their discoveries was legit and which was just tomfoolery.

This is a fun graphic novel that chronicles the events of the Bone Wars and also incorporates some really cool cameos by people like P.T. Barnum, Buffalo Bill and Alexander Graham Bell. Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards is as educational as it is entertaining and a great look at one of my favorite bizarre moments of history.

4/5

Another fascinating graphic from Ottaviani where you find yourself learning a little history as you read. This book covers The Bone Wars which was a time in American history when two determined paleontologists competed with each other to find the most dinosaur bones and stopped at nothing to discredit the other in the process.

This is such a unique and awesome graphic novel. It has a great mix of historical facts and humour. The true story itself is pretty comical, the rivalry between Cope and Marsh was a embarrassing time in paleotological history but I think it's good that people know about it because of the dispute of Brontosaurus. I think it was terrible that they knew Brontosaurus wasn't a real dinosaur after the whole thing happened, but the reason they couldn't change it was because Marsh was held a high position in the USGS. I also like that at the end of the book there is a fact and fiction section telling what they added to make the story more exciting and what was actually true which makes the whole story so much more interesting. This is a hard book to find but deffinitly check it out, expecially if you are interested in the history of paleontology.

I already knew a bit about the Bone Wars going in, and found this book to be an intriguing romp through the fossil fields of the Wild West, interspersed with scenes of the interpersonal politics at the intersection of science and government and the founding of the USGS. The graphic novel distills the rivalry between Marsh and Cope into one short story, also emphasizing the accomplishments of paleoartist Charles R Knight, whose paintings I was familiar with, but I otherwise didn’t know much about.

I appreciated the appendix section at the back, which clarifies which bits of the comic were fictional, or adjusted to make the story flow, and which bits were entirely factual.

This book is the true-life adventure of two of the earliest scientists to excavate, catalog and research dinosaur bones. Although one scientist is an opportunistic s.o.b. and the other an irresponsible s.o.b., Ottaviani does a good job drawing you in with humor and compelling supporting characters. The painter who envisioned dinosaurs from the early fossils gets a plum role as well, and he's a much more relatable character.

Ottaviani keeps things light and engaging, even when we're seeing a panel of scientists debate the ethics of our protagonists. The variety of settings gives Big Time Attic (Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon) plenty of opportunities to show their stuff - Europe, New York, the old west, dinosaurs, bandits, fine paintings, congress - it's all there, and all terrifically illustrated.