Retromorphs: Animorphs Megamorphs #02: In the Time of Dinosaurs

You ever have that one piece of media from one of your favorite things that you were super excited for when it's announced and yet when you experience it, you're incredibly underwhelmed? Well, with Animorphs that distinction goes to the TV show. But you ever have a second piece of media from one of your favorite things that you were super excited for when it's announced and yet when you experience it, you're incredibly underwhelmed? Call that a case of burying the lede here, but that's probably my easiest way to describe my history with the second Megamorphs book. 

Animorphs in dinosaur times, getting dino morphs, having an adventure, sounds awesome. Then you remember it's a Megamorphs and that these books aren't as important to the general plot of the series. Less deep insight on the universe, more amnesia subplots and the villain being a giant cloud. All wrapped in one big, clunky package. It's also a book that stands out to me for the big pivotal part of the story, which I know certain people really hate. So will I feel the same? Will a reread of this book change my perception? Probably not but hell with it. Let's find out as we journey In the Time of Dinosaurs.

I don't usually cover the covers of Animorphs since there isn't much to really say. Freaky image of a kid or hawk or Andalite being morphed into an animal. Pretty straightforward. This cover does require some mention as Scholastic went all out for this book, giving it about seven covers at least. All are the same front cover, but with different colors, each with an inside cover of a mid-morph Animorph, sans Tobias and Ax who just look normal, well normal in hawk mode I guess. A seventh edition features all of the inside cover arts. I think my original copy was the one with Cassie as the inside cover, don't fully recall, but the copy I currently own is the multi-character inside page. I do like the front cover art, a cool mix of the eyes of the main cast and the different animal patterns. Doesn't exactly scream "book about dinosaurs" but as a more experimental attempt by the brand, it does a great job.

Similar to the last Megamorphs, this book is multi-narrated with each character getting focused chapters. I guess it's fitting I covered Baby-sitters on Board before this to get readjusted to this gimmick.

Marco opens the book telling us the normal preamble and that he saw on TV the news report of a nuclear sub nearby that has sunk into the sea. So he tells Jake and the others about the situation and the group head to the beach, morph dolphin and are on their way. Cassie is up next who mentions she loves morphing dolphin which, I guess those ethics issues she had in book four about morphing dolphin have gone away. Character growth, I love it. Jake is next (these first chapters are super quick so I don't blame you if you have whiplash already) and the group find the sub and rescue the crew inside. They get the people to land as Ax asks about the sub, with Jake saying that it has a nuke on it, you know in case of emergency. The Animorphs say that it shouldn't present much of a problem. That is until a large flash engulfs the area.

Rachel wakes up, still a dolphin as everyone tries to recover. Cassie's dolphin form is pretty messed up, but she recovers after demorphing. That's the good news. The bad news, is they're in a place they aren't familiar with and there's a giant volcano nearby. Also a giant long-necked creature emerges from the water. Everyone thinks it might be Visser Three in his funky new monster morph of the book, but Tobias knows what it really is, but won't tell the others just yet. More creatures emerge from the water and one eats Tobias and Rachel. They demorph, but have to deal with, you know, the stomach acid. Something tells me this was someone's vore awakening, so... neat? Outside of the beast, Cassie tries to fight it, but is dragged away by the others. Something about the last few books in particular is that Cassie has been more proactive lately. More willing to fight. This is going to be more important next book, but it's worth noting right here. 

The group demorph and begin to realize they're not in Kansas anymore. They thing the explosion somehow sent them flying like Team Rocket to the middle of nowhere which does make me laugh at the idea of flying dolphins. They for a second think maybe they're in Madagascar. Yeah these are the heroes meant to save Earth from the Yeerks, but they are still dumb kids at the end of the day. But more concerning is that Ax notices trees torn apart by something, and large, clawed footprints of something possibly reptilian. Another creature emerges from the water and eats some leaves. They then start to realize that they're looking at a dinosaur. Also a T-Rex shows up, which means they're going to have to run for it.

Back to Rachel and Tobias, who have demorphed and are still inside the dinosaur's stomach. She morphs bear and manages to tear into the creature's lungs and escape. Tobias is a mess, but they're alive. Tobias tells her that they were in the belly of a Hadrosaur. One thing the book makes crystal clear is that Tobias knows dinosaurs. He used to play with model dinosaur sets and was very well educated. It was pretty much something to take away from the fact that his aunt and uncle really sucked. Which in turn does feel like a case of K.A. Applegate playing Miss Educator for the book since we're in a book with dinosaurs, why not teach the kids reading some dino facts. He morphs human then back to hawk, but is still injured. Seems that morphing doesn't heal injuries here. Rachel wonders if this is like Jurassic Park, to which Tobias says that the movie was super inaccurate and it's more the cretaceous than Jurassic. 

 

The others continue to be chased by the T-Rex, but Ax manages to slash and subdue it. Though even he knows that this was more a lucky break. Ax then realizes what happened. That the explosion from the nuclear sub somehow ripped a hole in time, a Sario Rip as it's called. The kids have no idea what to do to survive this, though Cassie suggests tearing up the T-Rex and using its hide for protection and food. Yeah, like I said, we've been getting a more "into all this a little too much" Cassie lately. This will be important next book I promise. But given she thinks two of her friends are dead, I think we can cut her some slack on being more proactive on wanting to eat dinosaur jerky. Speaking of the other two, they continue their trek through the jungle. They spot a campfire a few miles away, but before they can reach it, they see a triceratops being caught in the trap by deadly Deinonychus, which means they're also caught in the same trap. The others continue eating their T-Rex meal, noting that technically they're the first inventors of fire and the first inventors of weapons and such. They also spot a comet in the sky. That can't possibly be a concerning omen. Especially in dinosaur times.

Back to Tobias and Rachel and the Deinonychus. The two split up as Tobias grabs onto a Deinonychus and acquires its morph. He turns into one of the dinosaurs and tries to control himself in the new form. Rachel fights them off and sees Tobias in his Deinonychus form. He eventually manages to control himself. Back with the others, they wake up as more dinosaurs chase them including yet another T-Rex. Jake gets pinned down and eaten by the T-Rex, giving us not one but TWO vore scenes in this book so I'm damn sure it was an awakening book for someone. Jake manages to acquire the T-Rex and morph inside it, forcing the dinosaur to cough him out. The others also acquire the T-Rex forms in case they might need them. Which sounds like the coolest shit ever, you see why I'm disappointed that this book really doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme? Though I guess T-Rex morphs would feel like a cheat code against the yeerks so I can also see why Applegate wouldn't have just let them keep these forms. The group then see a flash of light, to which Ax realizes they're not alone. Some other species is here with them. Not the Yeerks, but something else. And sure enough they find a small village and a flying saucer.

Tobias and Rachel are super hungry given they haven't had the luxury yet of freshly cooked dino meat. They run into a pair of Spinosaurus. They both morph Deinonychus and try to fight when suddenly, a creature about eight feet tall with reddish skin and big eyes blasts the Spinosaurus with a blaster and tells the two to demorph. The creature is a Nesk and it orders the two to demorph. Rachel just attacks it and eats it (Vore scene #3, keeping count). But she soon spits it out as she realizes that the Nesk is a creature made of ants. The others decide to morph bird (Moreso Cassie who again has been the most proactive of the bunch) to check out the city below and what this species could be. However this is a bad idea as they get attacked by Pteranodons. At the same time, Tobias and Rachel, in their dino morphs, are being chased by a Nesk spaceship that's blasting at them. They soon eventually spot the others being attacked by the Pteranodons. Rachel grabs one and yanks it down with her, as they all find themselves on a force field. They're all happy that the others, you know, didn't die, and Rachel and Tobias tell them of the Nesk. They wonder if the Nesk are the ones in the cities below, but soon hear in thought speak the voice of a creature known as the Mercora. 

The Mercora are sort of crab-like creatures, seven legs, four larger than the others, short, wide bodies, a large pincer and a whole bunch of eyes. They tell the Animorphs that they immigrated to this planet after their planet was destroyed in a black hole. They've tried to live peacefully, but the Nesk have been giving them problems. The Animorphs demorph and tell the Mercora they're from the future, but Tobias realizes that it's not wise to tell them about humans becoming Earthlings since the Mercora clearly aren't going to make it to the future. And trust me, Tobias being the one to say it is going to be a big issue later on, but we're still about 70 pages left in this book to get to what I mean about that. So they Mercora are kind, peaceful creatures who plant broccoli, which the book is saying was an alien plant this whole time. This book is very Dale Gribble-ish. The Nesk however, seem to destroy any sentient beings with intelligence, hence why they leave the dinosaurs alone. They also could have whatever the Animorphs need to set off an explosion that could fix the Sario Rip since we're going by the logic of "one explosion messed things up, so another explosion should do the trick with no setbacks to the natural order". So they should morph dinos and trigger that explosion.

The plan is for the Animorphs to head to the Nesk's base and steal the bomb they need, though Ax doesn't quite know where they need to be to make the Sario Rip repair itself. Tobias and Rachel morph Deinonychus while the others morph T-Rex. This turns out to be a bad call as the three are unable to control theirselves in T-Rex morph. Especially Cassie who tears apart a Triceratops and starts to eat it before she eventually snaps out of it. This comes after her spiel about not wanting to hurt animals, which came after the whole "Let's tear up the dinosaur corpse and eat it" stuff from earlier. Again, if the book does anything right it's with Cassie. She panics, realizing she killed an animal and starts to demorph, again feeling like she's becoming as bad as a Yeerk, or a Nazi, which okay calm down now. Do you think you've committed a crime when you step on a bug? I think I'll have a lot to say about Cassie when we get to the conclusion of this book. And, again, if anything comes out of this book it's that a lot of this whole thing does make the next book make a bit more sense.

They arrive at the Nesk base and are able to steal a bomb. But it turns out to be a big mess as the Nesk have detectors that catch them in thought speak. The ant creatures go on a full-on assault with their blasters. The Mercora ships try to help out, but they get blasted. When the Animorphs are safe on another Mercora ship, they notice that the aliens have removed one of their legs as a form of tribute for the loss of their comrades, since they are ultimately a creature who don't believe in killing. But the battle managed to work in their favor with the Nesk choosing to leave the planet. That's the good news and cause for celebration, only there's still one looming issue... the giant comet that's now a big deal as it's heading to Earth. Yeah, it turns out that this is the final gambit of the Nesk. They diverted the comet to hit Earth since they're sore losers and won't just let the Mercora have it if they can't. But the Mercora do have a plan. They need to take the nuke the Animorphs just got and drop it on the comet, thereby destroying it and saving them all. That means no possible trip home for the Animorphs if the whole thing about the explosion needing to be at the right place is a factor here.

*Sigh* And then... it happens.

After some time for the group to deliberate, Tobias tells the Animorphs that they need to go, now. To let the comet hit the planet. He had Ax deactivate the nuke. He tells them to morph bird and to leave, explaining that this clearly was all meant to happen. Something hit the Earth 65 million years ago to wipe out the dinosaurs and bring on the birth of the next evolution, the human race. The others tell Tobias that he can't know for sure that it's this comet in particular, but he's like "Trust me, it's definitely probably this comet, since there's no Mercora fossils to prove it. This is the necessary step needed for the human race to survive. So yeah. Tobias is cool with a genocide of an alien species so long as it means the survival of others. All while convincing the Mercora to take a nuke that Tobias and Ax deliberately broke on them, to lead the creatures who saved them to their deaths. Completely based on a gut feeling about one particular comet striking the Earth. I'll get to this in the conclusion, trust me, but I'll agree with the sentiment of others. Fuck Tobias at this moment. Cassie tries to argue with it, but quickly relents when Tobias is all "No, this has to happen", so fuck Cassie too I guess. All that "I would never kill creatures, I'd be like a Nazi or Yeerk" shit just to immediately relent on a gut feeling. I'll get to it in the conclusion, the book is almost over, so let's finish that first. 

The group fly as far away from the comet as possible and return to the water. They hit the water and morph dolphin. Cassie watches from the water as the explosion wipes out everything and destroys the dinosaurs. The group then find themselves snapped back to before the nuclear explosion. The crew of the sub are saved. Some time passes and sure enough, the group can't morph T-Rex because I guess that got reset in the Sario Rip AKA we can't have the group as T-Rexes having more cool adventures. Also we end on a Tobias note saying he looked up info on extinct dinosaurs before the end of the Cretaceous but he's seen those dinosaurs in real life, so fuck you science. I mean, there were also aliens called Mercora and you fucked them over, so shut your beak, bird brain. And then I literally threw the book across the room. 

Oh yeah, there's that underwhelmed feeling I was talking about. This book might be the most Superfluous Clay book out of all of them, and given some of the filler books on the way that's saying something. Nothing about this book matters in the grand scheme. There's no Yeerks, they only barely get mentioned. We get dinosaur morphs, but just two out of the many teased in the promo image and they're exclusive to ONLY this book. And then there's the ending, and oh I have a lot to say about the ending, but I'll just add that to the list and get started. I mean, say what you will about the last Megamorphs book and the very gimmicky feel it had, but at least I came out of it mostly positive. If it weren't for the ending, I'd probably have been in the same boat ultimately with this book. Frustrating, but not important to the grand scheme. A large filler book and nothing more. And the idea on paper is neat. The entire focus of Animorphs has revolved around morphing animals, so of course the idea of dinosaur morphs would likely be in readers' heads about how cool that would be. This book by all means should have worked.

I'll start with the things I did like. I liked most of the first half of the book. The Animorphs having to survive the Cretaceous period, being chased by dinosaurs. Being split up, having to deal with surviving until they reunite. The action is exciting, giving us a lot more than we usually do in the book. I like most of what the book does with Cassie. The recent books have given more focus on Cassie's moral boundaries and how a lot of recent situations have started making her more proactive in fighting and even killing. But she clearly isn't someone who is fully into the idea and when brought to her senses feels like she's going too far. That being an Animorph has brought about traits in her that she feared. A killer instinct she never wanted. The next book focuses a bit on how she's started to change, and it plays a part in what happens next with her, at least in the context of the next book. She begins to fear that she's becoming like killers, like tyrants, like someone who is fine with the death of others so long as she survives. Which makes her look like a hypocrite for being cool with Tobias by the end. It's a character in a mental tug-of-war and I like it.

I like the idea of the Nesk and the Mercora. Their concepts are neat, with the Nesk being alien ants that form a hivemind and are quick to kill any threat to their dominance as a sentient being. While the Mercora are these crab-like creatures that only wanted peace, only wanted to find a home on Earth because they have nowhere else to go. Creatures that hate conflict, but ultimately have to engage in conflict for their survival, even sacrificing body parts to honor the fallen. I will say though that this end plot feels slightly similar to the last book The Decision. The Animorphs snapped to somewhere and have to help a peaceful species from a group of invaders, with a bomb being the key reason to save the day. Only that bomb went off to save a race, while the bomb here was rigged to not explode to save a timeline. A necessary evil versus just an evil. One a needed act of heroism, one just straight up bullshit.

Tobias can fuck off. Like, legitimately fuck off. Again he didn't know that this was the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs and the Mercora and even if he did, the way he went about this was horrible beyond any chance of a plausible defense. If the comet landing was just the only thing about this situation, then I can see his reasoning. That this has to be the moment that everything goes down. That the Nesk ultimately win out without conquering the Earth. But nope. That's not how this goes down at all. Instead, Tobias orchestrates this whole thing. He has Ax make the nuke unusable and tells the group to run for it while never telling the Mercora, never really showing much of a sense of remorse that he just let an alien race try to bomb a comet with a dud bomb and have no defense as a race of aliens are wiped out. And given that we know their planet was wiped out by a black hole, that means the entire death of a race. And the general feeling of the Animorphs are "I'm angry about this, but oh well. At least the human race will still come and be the dominant race on the planet. Fuck the innocent aliens who given they literally tore off body parts in tribute to fallen comrades had more compassion and humanity than us, actual human beings."

It's the hypocrisy that gets me. The way the Animorphs just let this happen. Just mislead an innocent race in their safety and just let them die. Their safety being more important than the Mercora. It's honestly one of their most craven and sickening acts. Cassie, for all her bullshit about "I can't kill animals, I'll be like a Nazi" then shrugging off a genocide so easily, for some shitty claim of a "greater good. The way it has to be". Congrats Cassie, you are what you claim to fear becoming. And all that with really no self reflection of what they did, no real sense of remorse. Jake going "I'm mad but I get it", meaning he was still more mad at Rachel defending herself from a possible rapist than he was a genocide which, trust me, it'll be a while, but Jake's going to do something so horrific that him going "I'm mad but I get it" will make way more sense down the line. These are our heroes. All of this time talking about the evils of the Yeerks and not wanting to ever end up like the Yeerks only to do something so unspeakably shitty that it makes the Yeerk invasion feel like kid gloves. 

It is probably the biggest killer of a book I've read since The Babysitter III. And that book was ultimately a just okay book until Stine decided to turn a victim into a villain, believing herself to be the man who almost killed her. This, somehow, is even worse than that. It feels like it comes out of fucking nowhere. Like we need an added beat for drama with no real consideration for how it would affect these characters going forward. Which really should have been considered. Even if this wasn't going to affect the canon of the series, doing things like this still hurt these characters in the eyes of the reader. And to do it to Tobias sucks so hard. Building him up with two great books, a lot of great character moments, genuine sympathy for his plight, only to write him like a Mr. Friggin' Know-it-All about dinosaurs and be a saboteur and a genocidal maniac. That last page in particular irks me the most. Him being too much of a smug little fuck about his fun wacky dinosaur adventure with no remorse at all. I love this series, but god damn there are just some super indefensible things inside of it. 

So no. I can't recommend this one. Even with my anger, I will say that it's not the worst book I've ever read. It does have some good action, and I do think there's a solid survival story within. But even most of that feels very much like filler to pad this 231 page book to the point it feels like we repeat so much. The gimmick of the book feels unfulfilled and zero Yeerk involvement makes this all pointless in the grand scheme. It comes so close to the finish line at being a very just okay book but makes one decision that kills the book entirely and makes our heroes look like cowards and makes one of them look like a sociopath. Character assassination in a book that doesn't matter still matters in the grand scheme. I still love Animorphs and I still think there's a lot of good to the series, but this was a massive T-Rex turd of a book. It is bad filler that won't matter after the next book and honestly, fucking great. The sooner we're out of this funk the better, which sucks because this is definitely going in the worst I read in 2025 list, which means I'll have to talk about it again soon. So spoilers I guess. I haven't read the other two Megamorphs. No way in hell they're worse than this. In the Time of Dinosaurs gets a D.

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