Astrosaurs is a long-running series of children's science fiction novels written by British author Stephen Cole and published by Random House. The series ran from 2005 to 2013, with a total of 24 books in all.
Far from being the Dumb Dinos we see in popular culture, dinosaurs were supremely intelligent - enough to have figured out space travel as early as the Triassic period. As a result, the vast majority of them had left Earth long before the meteorite hit, and now occupy a far-flung area of space known as the Jurassic Quadrant, divided between herbivores and carnivores with a 'no-man's land' of space in between. While the two sides maintain an uneasy peace, enforced by the Dinosaur Space Service (DSS), tensions still flare from time to time.
The series focuses on Captain Teggs Horatio Stegosaur (Teggs for short), Captain of the DSS Sauropod, and his various adventures alongside his crew - Arx Longhorn Orano, Iggadoo "Iggy" Tooth and Gipsy Saurine. Under the command of the old barosaurus Admiral Rosso, the crew travels the Jurassic Quadrant on various missions to help maintain peace through the galaxy, getting into all manner of adventures and foiling many evil schemes. Think Star Trek, but with dinosaurs.
A spinoff series, Astrosaurs Academy, ran from 2008 to 2011, and served as a prequel detailing Teggs’ time as a younger stegosaur in the DSS Academy. The final book in the series, The Dinosaur Moo-tants, was a crossover between Astrosaurs and Cows In Action and served as a Series Finale.
Astrosaurs contains examples of the following tropes:
- Big Eater: Teggs' love of adventure is matched only by his love of food.
- Carnivore Confusion: Apparently, all predatory dinosaurs still enjoy eating their herbivorous counterparts.
- Let's You and Him Fight: In The Dinosaur Moo-tants, The FBI manages to pull this off masterfully. Detecting the Astrosaurs arriving in pursuit of him, the Ter-moo-nator T5 and his mutant allies kneel before McMoo, Pat and Bo. The arriving Astrosaurs leap to the conclusion that the three Cows are the ringleaders and attack, forcing the Cows to defend themselves.
- No Honor Among Thieves: The Mind-Swap Menace has Dasta and Ardul (in the stolen bodies of Texx and Iggy) try to betray each other to obtain a matter replicator, leading to a brawl between them.
- Predators Are Mean: With only a few exceptions, almost all the villains faced by the Astrosaurs are carnivorous dinosaurs. Even aside from that, the series depicts all carnivores to be warlike brutes who see nothing wrong with eating other sapient dinosaurs.
