 In fewer than 40 years as a scientist , Cope published over 1 @,@ 400 scientific papers , a record that stands to this day . These include three major volumes : On the Origin of Genera ( 1867 ) , The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West ( 1884 ) and " Essays in Evolution " . He discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species during the Bone Wars compared to Marsh 's 80 . Although Cope is today known as a herpetologist and paleontologist , his contributions extended to ichthyology , in which he catalogued 300 species of fishes over three decades . In total , he discovered and described over 1 @,@ 000 species of fossil vertebrates and published 600 separate titles . 
