The Featherhead Sharpteeth (Allosaurus) are a pair of antagonistic dinosaurs who appear in The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave, as two of the main antagonists of the film (alongside the Horned Sharptooth). They live in the Mysterious Beyond, particularly a region known as "The Land of the Featherhead Sharpteeth".
Character[]
Appearance[]
The two dinosaurs sport shades of dull green and olive proto-feathers. They sport cyan crests on their snouts, dull red skin around their eyes, and a layer of teal fuzz forming a mane down their necks and to the tips of their tails, with fluffy "sideburns" sprouting from the sides of their heads.
Unlike most of the Sharpteeth, they appear to sport feathered eyebrows, and highly visible antorbital fenestra (the dark patch between their nose and their eyes).
The eyes of the pair are red, with yellow sclera and no pupils.
History[]
The sharptooth pair appear during the kids' quest to the Fire Mountain in the first half of the film. After entering the Land of the Featherhead Sharpteeth and hearing the roars of the carnivores, the children hatch a plan to lose their interest by coating themselves in foul smelling vegetation (they have a superb sense of smell). This leads to the song "Hot and Stinky". This plan works, though it nearly ends in failure due to the noise of Petrie (the sharpteeth have very good hearing as well), though crisis is ultimately avoided when the two theropods decide to chase after a small mammal.
Later, however, the pale green sharptooth pick up on the kids' scent after they accidentally wash away the stink while playing in a pond. The pale green one signals his smaller subordinate to follow him. The pale green Featherhead cuts through the air with a roar, and the children hide. The pair easily sniff them out, and a chase then occurs as the kids make a break for it. They chase the gang for a while, stopping once the kids run into a small cave. The pale green Featherhead does not give up, and he and his subordinate break through the cave and continue the chase. The pale green sharptooth then smashes a series of rock pillars in his way; he is likely angry that the children have evaded him this long. The chase finally slows down once the Featherheads reach an incline. The kids run up it, and are halted by the edge of a cliff.
The pair then scale the steep hill, albeit with difficulty. Once the pale green sharptooth reaches the top, he slowly approaches Littlefoot towards the cliff, and is then tripped on a vine pulled by the rest of the gang and falls down the cliff. The sharptooth recovers from the fall, but can't climb back up. Meanwhile, the smaller olive one Featherhead reaches the top while the kids celebrate. Cera isn't scared and pushes a bunch of rocks off the edge, sending the olive sharptooth back down the hill, who retreats from the scene, defeated.
Later, during the night time, Wild Arms hears the roars of one of the Featherheads, and tries to come up with an excuse to not go with Grandpa Longneck and Daddy Topps so he can "live", but it doesn't work. Strangely, they do not come across the sharpteeth later on, now joined by Chomper and Ruby. It is also night, a time when the theropods would be most active. The encounter likely did not happen to speed up the pacing of the movie.
Trivia[]
- The Featherhead Sharpteeth strongly resemble the likes of Yutyrannus and Monolophosaurus in their design, and were most likely based on at least one of them. However, in early 2019, Llyn Hunter, a storyboard artist for Journey of the Brave referred to them as Allosaurus.
- They are the second (after Ichy, an avian Ichthyornis, from The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists) antagonistic feathered dinosaurs to appear in the franchise.
- Similarly, they are also the largest feathered dinosaurs to appear in the series, superseding even the Yellow Bellies in size.
- Interestingly, it is one of the few large Sharpteeth in the series that lacks proper lips, along with the Plated Sharptooth, the Sailback Sharptooth, the Hookthumb Sharpteeth, and, also from XIV, the Horned Sharptooth.
- Similarly, to date, the Featherheads, alongside the Horned Sharptooth, are the only Sharpteeth in the franchise to have visible antorbital fenestrae (the depression between the orbit and naris present in archosaurs, the group of which crocodilians and dinosaurs are included).
- Their defeats are somewhat similiar to the deaths of the mated pair of Carnotaurus from Disney's Dinosaur, as they are both defeated by falling rocks (the female carnotaur and the second featherhead) and falling off of a tall cliff (the male carnotaur and the first featherhead), respectively, although the Carnotaurus die and the Featherhead Sharpteeth are only roughed up.
- If the Featherheads are mates, this gives even more similarities between the two sharpteeth.
- The sharpteeth seem to have much better hearing and a much better sense of smell than most other sharpteeth in the franchise. They both hear Petrie from a small distance away after he was talking quietly, and the pale green Featherhead sniffed out the gang from far away after the stinkweed fell off of them.
- The pale green Featherhead appears to be much larger than the olive one; this may imply that the pair are separate sexes. This could also mean that the olive one is younger than the pale green one.
- The Yutyrannus in the film have four fingers instead of three.
- Incidentally, the number of fingers, and the presence of an opposable thumb, gives a minor impression of the Indominus rex from Jurassic World, another Universal property featuring dinosaurs. Although the arms of the Indominus are larger as a whole, the shape of the hands are oddly similar to those of the Allosaurus as depicted in this movie.
- This is not the first time a three-fingered theropod is presented with four fingers in The Land Before Time; one in particular was the sharpteeth from The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends.
- In the movie, both individuals are referred to as males, by Littlefoot and Cera respectively, which may mean that the pair consists of two males.
- However, in The Land Before Time universe, sexual dimorphism for female sharpteeth is usually shown as the females having lighter coloring, which may mean that the olive sharptooth may be female.
- Some people have believed that the Featherhead Sharpteeth aren't villains, although they were villains because they're actually sentient predators. Most of the sharpteeth are sentient predators which they are not normal animals at all.
Gallery[]
