out. Chief Red Cloud remarks that it is a true story; Marsh rebukes him, saying that science says man's ancestors were smaller than him. As he leaves, Red Cloud responds, "It is not a story about science. It is about men." Years later Knight and his wife are taking their granddaughter Rhoda to the American Museum of Natural History. Knight is visiting the new mammoth specimens: the girl, however, is eager to see more of her grandfather's paintings. Meanwhile, the staff are sorting Marsh's long-neglected collection of fossils. Two of the workers discover Knight's Leaping Laelaps has been accidentally left in the storeroom. The painting is taken back downstairs while the workmen leave Cope's and Marsh's bones behind. Development Jim Ottaviani published his first graphic novel in 1997, and conceived the idea for Bone Sharps while working his day job as a librarian at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Ottaviani's job included purchasing books for engineering topics, but a new book about the Bone Wars caught his eye. He bought the book himself and found himself fascinated by the rivalry between Cope and Marsh. He described his process as spending time doing research, before turning an outline and timeline into a structured story. Using the book as a starting point, Ottaviani read the accounts and biographies of Cope and Marsh as well as other period sources. During the course of his research Ottaviani found the then-unpublished autobiography of Charles Knight. The book inspired him to make the book into a work of historical fiction, something Ottaviani had not done in previous non-fiction books and comics on scientific figures. "I found the whole 'war' aspect [of the Bone Wars] over-hyped," Ottaviani recalled. "These guys never came to blows, or even did anything that went very far beyond questionable ethics." In comparison to his previous works, Ottaviani called the scientists "the bad guys". While the majority of Bone Sharps is true and all of it is based on history, Ottaviani took liberties throughout to better serve the story. In real life, Knight did not meet Cope until only a few years before Cope's death; In addition, Knight's autobiography states that it was reporter William Hosea Ballou who introduced the two, not Osborn. There is also no evidence Marsh and Knight ever met. On Knight's role in the story, Ottaviani wrote: As I was reading about Cope and Marsh, I ran