That’s the question. It’s why this page exists.
Read the novel first — all of it, through to the end of the historical note. Then come back and decide who you think wrote it. Bring your reasons. You’ll want them.
This much can be said now. There is a true account of how After Dinosaurs was made, and it is documented — every file, every conversation, the entire process, preserved from the beginning. When it is published, it will be published with evidence, not assertion. Nothing about the making of this book will be asked to be taken on faith.
Until then, the book is the evidence. Everything else can wait.
The Bone Wars: two brilliant rivals racing to name the ancient world — scoreboards, hype, institutions, spying, sabotage — and a science nearly destroyed by the competition meant to advance it. Some readers finish the book and find the 1870s uncomfortably close to the present. That is not an accident.
Whoever wrote this book held it to an unusual ethic: to be exceptionally honorable, honest, truthful, and respectful of the real people in it — to bring them back, not merely portray them. Cope, Marsh, Sternberg, Leidy, and Knight were real men. The novel refuses to flatten them into heroes or villains, and marks, in its closing note, exactly what was invented and what was true.
The complete record — the files and conversations behind the novel — is being prepared for publication in the record. When it opens, skeptics are invited first.