Land Before Time Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Land Before Time Wiki
Unamused featherheads

This article describes Apatosaurus as it is portrayed in The Land Before Time series and should not be used as a resource for information about the real animal.

Readers who would like to learn about real Apatosaurus should look to other sources, like the ones listed below:


Apatosaurus is a type of herbivorous dinosaur depicted in The Land Before Time series. It is one of several types of dinosaur known by inhabitants of the world as a "longneck".

Many characters in The Land Before Time are Apatosaurus. Examples of Apatosaurus in the series include the main protagonist Littlefoot[3], his mother, his father,[4] and his grandparents. Others include Littlefoot's distant cousin Ali, her mother, Ali's friend Rhett and the herd to which they belong, led by the matriarch known as the Old One.

Description

Adult Apatosaurus are very large dinosaurs, towering over most other species. Much of their height is taken up by their eponymous long necks, which are are tipped by relatively small, boxy heads. According to oral tradition, Apatosaurus, and presumably other longnecks in general, earned their long necks after the Bright Circle caused the trees to grow too tall for the animals that ate from them to reach. Pitying the dinosaurs, the Night Circle intervened and gave the ancestral longnecks the trait that would later become their defining characteristic.[5] Unlike some other types of longneck, their heads are fairly flat, bearing no sort of crests or bumps. The term "flathead" may be derived from this relatively plain condition. Like most longnecks, their nostrils are high up on their heads and their teeth are flat.

There are two primary variants of Apatosaurus depicted in the series. The first, introduced in the original The Land Before Time and represented by most named Apatosaurus characters, possesses a bumpy dorsal ridge, a wrinkled face and occasionally a dark band of color running from the top of its head, down its back and to its tail. The second morph of Apatosaurus, which debuted in The Land Before Time VII: The Stone of Cold Fire, has no such dorsal ridge, a smoother face, and almost never possesses any sort of markings. Both types of Apatosaurus are extremely variable in terms of color, though individuals of the second morph tend to be a dull pink-purple color. Young Apatosaurus tend to have a zigzagging dorsal stripe running from their heads down to their tails.

List of Apatosaurus characters

Gallery

References

Advertisement