Abstract: This paper contains both philosophical and literal dinosaurs. Philosophical dinosaurs use a ‘reductive model’ to analyze the sciences. The world is structured in an ontological hierarchy and scientific structures reflect that fact. Sciences are delineated according to which entity of study (or level of description) they are concerned with and epistemic priority tracks that ontological hierarchy. I argue that such a model cannot account for the historical sciences as they have a different structure. By examining recent paleobiological attempts to explain gigantism in Sauropods (the literal dinosaurs) I argue that the historical sciences have distinctive features which are not captured by the reductive model.

Very few philosophers of science still explicitly commit to reductive models of science, but this paper is not merely flogging a dead triceratops. Reductive models are still implicit in some areas of both philosophy and science. Moreover, understanding the failure of reductive accounts could form the basis of a positive story about how the sciences relate to one another.