BEYOND COPE'S BIBLE; SOME SPECIMENS OF FOSSIL MAMMALIA FROM E.D. COPE'S VERTEBRATA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATIONS OF THE WEST (1883) AND W. D. MATTHEW'S HERETOFORE UNPUBLISHED PLATES OF TERTIARY MAMMALIA AND PERMIAN VERTEBRATA (1915)

In 1915 William D. Matthew published a volume of illustrations including many of Tertiary mammals from the collections that Edward Drinker Cope had sold to the American Museum shortly before his death in 1897. Matthew commented in his Preface that this volume was intended to at least expose some of the fossils and Cope's earlier scientific papers on them in a more comprehensive fashion. Matthew's book was not to be the sequel to Cope's famous Tertiary Vertebrata but a sort of visual key to what such a sequel might have entailed had Cope lived to see it into print. This paper presents a brief overview of Cope's work with the Hayden Survey as it involved fossil mammalia and it discusses the questions of sponsorship of the Tertiary Vertebrata by the Survey as well as USGS sponsorship of Matthew's subsequent volume. Selected examples of plates are examined with respect to the role of Cope as an artist and consultant to his lithographers. While O.C. Marsh became well known for his work on fossil horses, Cope also contributed to the knowledge of horse evolution. Examples of his work on this material, later included in Matthew, 1915, will be discussed.