cover image Drawing Out Leviathan: Dinosaurs and the Science Wars

Drawing Out Leviathan: Dinosaurs and the Science Wars

Keith M. Parsons. Indiana University Press, $19.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-253-33937-9

For a more prehistoric perspective, Drawing Out Leviathan: Dinosaurs and the Science Wars pushes (mostly) hard data through the issues. In part I, University of Houston assistant professor of philosophy Keith M. Parsons has put together three ""case studies"" of how ideas shape the ways we reconstruct the lives of the long dead giants: the 45 years that poor Apatosaurus (better known as Brontosaurus) spent with the wrong head, the warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded debate and the ""asteroid theory,"" which suggests their mass doom was the result of a massive impact. The four chapters of part II dissect the carnage. ( July)