Sharptooth
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Sharptooth is a term coined in The Land Before Time series. It is used to refer to predatory dinosaurs, and also to one specfic Tyrannosaurus.
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[edit] Sharptooth
In the first entry of The Land Before Time series, there was one particular Sharptooth, a male Tyrannosaurus, who served as the main villain. He was unintentionally blinded by Littlefoot in his right eye so he kept it closed; as seen by how Cera identified him by that, this served to mark him as the Sharptooth to plant eating dinosaurs. He had an evil reputation and why was seen in how he persistently stalked Littlefoot and his friends throughout the film for seemingly no reason other than cruelty, (though a Junior novelisation of the original film cited vengence for his damaged eye as his motivation.) This Sharptooth is particularly notable for having been the one to have killed Littlefoot's mother.
Sharptooth seemed to possess a near supernatural level of strength, athleticism and durability for a Tyrannosaurus, crawling through sharp thorns after Littlefoot and Cera with nary a scratch, withstanding multiple blows to the face from Littlefoot's mother's tail, slamming his head through solid rock with no apparent ill effects, and surviving a several-hundred foot drop. He was also capable of massive leaps, even jumping forty feet straight up into the air onto a cliff at the film's climax.
It was believed that Sharptooth had died in his fight with Littlefoot's Mother, after being pushed into a deep chasm during the great earthquake. However, Cera later on crossed paths with him at the bottom of said chasm, where it was revealed the fall merely stunned him. Sharptooth was finally vanquished when Littlefoot, Spike, Cera, Ducky, and Petrie managed to shove him off a cliff into a deep pond, drowning him with the help of a huge boulder.
Sharptooth is often regarded as the one of the most effective animated dinosaurs ever and is compared to the Tyrannosaurus from the "Rite of Spring" sequence in Walt Disney's Fantasia.
[edit] Chomper's Parents
Next to Sharptooth himself and the infant Sharptooth Chomper, Chomper's parents are the most prominent Sharptooth characters in the series. They appear in the films in which their son is featured. Chomper's parents are never given names.
Chomper's father has a dark green hide and is more-or-less identical in appearance to Sharptooth, excepting that he doesn't always keep one eye closed. Chomper's mother, in contrast, is a light shade of greenish brown- she is also the only explicitly female Sharptooth to have appeared in the entire series.
Not much is known about Chomper's parents, though they have been shown to be very protective of their son, breaking into the Great Valley to search for him after his egg was stolen by Ozzie and Strut, and fighting to protect him from an aggressive Foreign Sharptooth. Some humor is gleaned from Chomper's father's concern over some of his son's bizarre behavior. On seeing Chomper gathering plants for Littlefoot and the others, the father thinks that Chomper is collecting plants for himself and says, by subtitles, "Sometimes I worry about that boy." He also has another funny moment when he meets Littlefoot, who, after hiding in the stinky flowers, smell like them. Chomper's father sniffs them, and says to Chomper's mother, "Anything that smells like that wouldn't taste very good anyway." Initially antagonistic towards Littlefoot and his friends, Chomper's parents promise not to eat them after Littlefoot saves their son's life.
[edit] Redclaw, Screech, and Thud
These are the latest regularly occurring or recurring Sharpteeth and are the first Sharpteeth since Chomper to have been assigned names. They have appeared only on the T.V. series and consist of Redclaw, a tyranosaurus identified by the long red scar extending from his eye down the side of his body and arm to his claw, and the two velociraptors Screech and Thud who appear to be his lackeys. There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between Redclaw and the raptors as Ducky has once said "wherever Screech and Thud are, Redclaw is never far behind" and in at least one episode (The Secret Canyon), the raptors actually led Redclaw to a breach in the wall protecting the Great Valley from the predators. How or why they hunt together is not known, though it could do with simple symbiosis (the raptors use their smarts, small size and greater agility to access places Redclaw can't get to when hunting and flush out prey while Redclaw's brute strength and ferocity protects them from being attacked or eaten themselves and guarantees them an easy meal). Nonetheless, it is almost impossible for Littlefoot and his friends to encounter one without encountering all three and at full strength, they make an incredible, not to mention lethal, team of carnivores. Similar to Littlefoot's being orphaned by the original Sharptooth, it is known that Redclaw and the raptors are responsible for the separation of Chomper and Ruby from their families.
[edit] Anonymous Sharpteeth
After the first movie, the term "Sharptooth" was extended to Theropods in general, and many other Sharpteeth appear throughout the series, though they are portrayed more as random wandering monsters than proper characters, none of them possessing the single minded ferocity and seeming invincibility of the original. Noting such things about the first Sharptooth, some Land Before Time fans have asked whether or not he was the same monstrous Sharptooth from whom "The Lone Dinosaur" saved the Great Valley long ago in The Land Before Time VI: The Secret of Saurus Rock. While that would confirm his reputation (when, in the first film, Cera refers to him as the Sharptooth, Ducky and Petrie recognize who she speaks of and cower) there is no real evidence to confirm or deny this hypothesis.
Tyrannosaurs, Dromaeosaurids, and miscellaneous large carnivores, have been referred to as "Sharpteeth", and the term "Swimming Sharptooth" was coined for a shark and later extended to include a Liopleurodon.
Although they are often perceived as mindless killers, being called "cowards" and "not very bright" by Littlefoot's father and grandfather respectivily, The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure revealed that Sharpteeth are indeed sentient like the rest of the dinosaurs and that they even form loving families. (Chomper, however, does acknowledge the difficulty of friendship between herbivores and carnivores due to their differences.) Furthermore in The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island Sharpteeth are shown to be just as intelligent as other dinosaurs but simply speak a different language consisting of roaring and growling. Perhaps as a response to people denigrating Sharpteeth, when Cera says, "Like they [Chomper and his parents] can talk!", the audience is shown what the carnivores are saying by means of subtitles (except in some versions of the movie). Chomper can speak in both the language of his parents and that of the other dinosaurs, making him (along with Mo) one of a very small number of bilingual dinosaurs in the series.
[edit] Voices of the Sharpteeth
Most of the Sharpteeth are voiced by Frank Welker, but Chomper is voiced by Rob Paulsen in The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure, Cannon Young in The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island, and Max Burkholder in The Land Before Time TV series. In The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving, Frank Welker was credited for the Velociraptors. In The Land Before Time XI: Invasion of the Tinysauruses, when Lizzie and Skitter are tickling one of the Velociraptors on its back, it's heard laughing. It was Frank Welker who portrayed its laugh, but he was uncredited. Frank Welker (uncredited) also portrayed the laugh of Spinosaurus in The Land Before Time XII: The Great Day of the Flyers, when it was heard laughing when it had its tonsils tickled by Guido.
[edit] See also
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| Film series |
The Land Before Time (1988) • The Great Valley Adventure (1994) • The Time of the Great Giving (1995) • Journey Through the Mists (1996) • The Mysterious Island (1997) • The Secret of Saurus Rock (1998) • The Stone of Cold Fire (2000) • The Big Freeze (2001) • Journey to Big Water (2002) • The Great Longneck Migration (2003) • Invasion of the Tinysauruses (2004) • The Great Day of the Flyers (2006) |
| Characters |
Littlefoot • Cera • Ducky • Petrie • Spike • Chomper • Ruby • Sharptooth • Characters |
| TV series |
The Land Before Time (2007-) |
| Others | |
