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Sharptooth is the main antagonist in the 1988 animated film The Land Before Time. It is unlikely that Sharptooth is his real name as it is also the name of his species, in production art, it is simply labeled "Tyrannosaurus Rex".

Background[]

Physical Appearance[]

Sharptooth is a massive dark green one eyed Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Personality[]

Little of Sharptooth's personality is seen in the film. However, the book that was sold along with the original film gives more insight on his actual thoughts. Sharptooth appears to be very persistent, given by the fact that he continues fighting Littlefoot's Mother despite the earthshake and multiple wounds, and that he continues to pursue the main characters throughout the film even though they would be of little food to him.

According to the book, much of this persistence is derived from vengeance, as he takes pleasure in cornering Littlefoot and Cera after the former had accidentally blinded him in one eye with a thorn. It is evident that he will continue fighting even when it is obviously hopeless, snapping at the children even when his head is trapped in a small tunnel and they are far out of reach. He doesn't stop trying when he is in extreme danger, as he tries to crush Littlefoot and Cera while falling to his apparent doom in the great earthshake, and pulls Petrie down with him in his last moments, plummeting into the water.

It is shown in the book that Sharptooth holds grudges, it is explained that after he spots the main characters for the second time, he immediately recognizes them and thunders towards them out of hatred. Even after they escape through the narrow pathway he continues to claw and snap at them with rage. It is also implied in the book that Sharptooth enjoys killing, as it is said that when he finds the entrance Great Valley he sniffs the air with evil joy, suggesting that he may get more out of killing than just food.

Role in the Film[]

The Land Before Time[]

On the night after they begin their journey to the Great Valley, Littlefoot the longneck, his mother, and grandparents stop to sleep when Littlefoot notices a frog and begins to chase it when he runs into Cera, the threehorn, to which she chases it with him. Shortly after they begin to play with it, a dark shadow falls over them and they look up to notice a huge sharptooth which they immediately run and hide from. During the chase, Littlefoot gets momentarily caught in some thorny vines, only for the vines to whip back into the advancing Sharptooth's face, causing blindness in one of his eyes and for him to recoil in pain and anger, allowing Littlefoot to make a break for it.

Luckily, Littlefoot's Mother hears their cries and comes to the rescue and faces off against the sharptooth. During the fight, the sharptooth jumps on the longneck's back and bites her but she manages to knock him off and after a brief struggle, pushes him off the edge of a cliff with a strike of her mighty tail, into a deep canyon formed by the earthshake where he was thought to have died.

A few days later, after getting separated from her family in the earthshake, Cera begins looking for them in the lower parts of the canyon and comes across Sharptooth's body. She reacts with fear initially but begins to believe that he's dead, nudging and hitting his snout with her horn but as she begins to charge into him again his eye opens. Realising he isn't dead, she screams in fear and runs out of the rocky ruins before he can come to. Cera then runs into Littlefoot and his new friends Ducky the bigmouth and Petrie the flyer and tells them about Sharptooth. However, Littlefoot doesn't believe her and thinks the T-rex is dead, so Cera acts out her experience to make them believe her and accidentally knocks Ducky away from the group, where she meets a spiketail and names him Spike, who also journeys with them on their way to the Great Valley.

That night, the five of them sleep in a nest and the next morning, Cera hears a roar, looks up, and sees Sharptooth approaching. She warns her startled friends, leading them running through a small cave which Sharptooth is too big to get past and Littlefoot is left in shock, but respects Cera more. A few days later, Littlefoot, Ducky, Spike and Petrie are continuing their journey to the Great Valley after Cera accidentally led them into danger and left the group ashamed of herself. Petrie hears a roar and the four look up to see Sharptooth climbing up into a high cave nearby. They decide to get rid of him once for all by pushing a big rock onto his head and causing him to fall into the water and drown. Ducky goes into the cave and lures Sharptooth out into the deep water. Littlefoot and Spike try to push the boulder onto Sharptooth's head from above, but it's too heavy for the two of them alone to push and Sharptooth jumps at an astonishing height onto the structure trying to get to them around the boulder with his small arms. The plan very nearly fails, but luckily, Cera arrives and helps them push both the boulder and the Sharptooth off the ledge into the water with a charging hit. Sharptooth, in a last ditch effort to get revenge, grabs Petrie's wing as he falls into the water. The four dinosaurs mourn the loss of their friend, but luckily Petrie escapes his jaws and returns to them.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • This Land Before Time character just roars. In the Jayden Shiba Show, he can speak like an evil warlord. 
  • His eyes are red while in other media he is shown with yellow eyes.
  • When The Land Before Time underwent its cutting and editing, many of the scenes cut out and edited featured Sharptooth's initial attack.
  • In different lighting, he appears dark grey to charcoal, while in other daytime scenes he is dark green.
  • One roar of the Sharptooth is reused for the sound eff3ct of a dragon in the Second Warcraft game.
  • Some people have believed that Sharptooth isn't a villain in the film version, although he is a villain because Don Bluth made the villainous predator of both versions in the film and novelization which he shown to be a sentient predator who seeks revenge on Littlefoot and the others for damaging his eye. Most of the sharpteeth are sentient predators which they aren't normal animals at all.
  • Sharptooth is seen with his eye shut before it gets hit by the thorn, even though it shouldn't be injured yet. This is most likely a mistake on the animators' part.
  • An audio glitch occurs when Sharptooth's eye is put out by the thorn, as Cera's scream can be heard from him.
  • Originally, Sharptooth was going to have more scenes throughout the film chasing after Littlefoot and his friends. The developers feared these scenes would be too scary for children, so these scenes were either trimmed or removed.
    • The scene where Sharptooth's eye is "poked out" was originally much more graphic, and scenes from a chase scene, including one where the main characters are trapped underneath him, were also cut.
  • Occasionally, Sharptooth would open his damaged eye, like when Cera charged towards him after his fall into the chasm, and he managed to open it, and towards the climax, he opened it several times. This may be an animation mistake, or it may be that the swelling on his eyelid had eased, and thus, he could open it.


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