My favorite beverage is Barq’s Root Beer. (I'm drinking one right now. )

One clichÈ of traditional dinosaur wisdom (I mean human knowledge about dinosaurs, not the philosophy of dinosaurs ) was that theropods (e.g., T. rex) were incapable of swimming, while herbivores (especially the duck-billed and long-necked varieties) were very good at it. As DarkHououmon stated, this was not the case. There are a number of known fossil trackways of theropods kicking their way through shallow water, so evidently these animals swam sometimes. The bodies of most living land animals are neutrally buoyant (they neither float nor sink in water), meaning that swimming comes fairly easily to them. Seeing as theropod skeletons were highly pneumatized (filled with hollow spaces containing air), they would have floated like corks.

Back to the subject of swimming theropods in LBT, we don’t even know how the Giganotosaurus got to the island in the first place. Obviously, it either used the land bridge (in which case it would have had to have arrived before the gang did) or swam across, but no indication is given of which one. Either way, it would have had to arrived fairly recently, as Chomper believed his parents to be “the only big sharpteeth around here,” and something as big as that Giganotosaurus would not go unnoticed for long on such a small island.

Even if the Giganotosaurus was overpowered by the current at the end of LBT V (though for all we know, it could have been swept all the way back to the mainland :unsure:), I can’t say we’ve seen any indication that LBT sharpteeth can’t swim. The raptors caught in the damburst in LBT III seemed to have been quite good at it, seeing as they made it to shore before they were even swept past the point where the leafeaters climbed out of the streambed. And in the TV series, Chomper seems to have no problem participating whenever the gang plays in water. And as far as the original Sharptooth is concerned, I think that he probably drowned not because he couldn’t swim (as Littlefoot had presumed), but because the rock the gang dropped on him knocked him unconscious, or at least breathless.

I've got plenty of potential submissions for this thread, but I'll start with this one from The Three Stooges short “Oily To Bed, Oily To Rise”:

The situation is that the stooges (Moe, Larry, and Curly) are trying to earn a meal by sawing wood for a farmer, but after inadvertently running the saw over Curly’s cast-iron head, the teeth are bent completely out of shape, leaving the stooges unable to cut anything until they have repaired the saw; a task which Moe assigns to Curly:

Moe: You’re gonna fix that saw, you half-brother to a weasel!
Curly: Listen, you! On behalf of the weasel, I resent that!

After a bit of searching, I think I found the website you mentioned. Are you talking about "Eric," the Australian pliosaur?
Strictly speaking, it's not a dinosaur, and "Eric" was a nickname given to the specimen, not the scientific name of the species (paleontologists often assign nicknames to the fossils they study; e.g., "Sue" the T. rex). But the website didn't mention either of these technicalities, so it's no fault of yours.

Once again Pangea (without meaning to ) reminded me of a thread I tend to be forgetful about. Thank you for that

You're welcome.
Having read the story (thank you for that ), I can tell you that regardless of weather visibility, the pictures (especially the colored one) capture the feel of the corresponding chapter very well. Though, if you don't mind me saying, Ducky looks a bit out of proportion in both images; namely in that her tail seems disproportionately short and her arms long. In any case, they're both great pictures.

I’ve always assumed that Dinah and Dana were just early bloomers.

I too have always thought it odd that the LBT Triceratops in The Land Before Time hatch with their nose horns (the smallest horn) and grow their brow horns later. (Like Malte, I am also somewhat infatuated with jokes involving the number of Cera’s horns. ) But I think that Shinji-Lee is probably right that the lack of brow horns makes facial expressions easier to animate, and agree that Cera is much cuter and less intimidating with her nose horn alone. (Of course, tell her that, and the next thing you know, she’ll be holding up the animators at hornpoint demanding they give her her other horns so she can look scarier. )

By the way, I did some research on those little frill projections; apparently, at least one ceratopsian paleontologist calls them epoccipitals (“ep-ock-sip-ih-tuls” is my best guess in terms of pronunciation). They’re structurally the same as the other horns on a ceratopsian’s head (extensions of the skull bones, probably covered in a keratinous sheath), so, as far as I know, Cera wouldn’t have been treading on any paleontological technicalities by referring to them as horns.

Cera's reaction upon seeing a Therizinosaurus (a relative of the yellow bellies, but the size of a T. rex, with hand claws three feet long).
Cera: Please, don't let that thing hug me!

Petrie has become the first flyer to reach the top of Mt. Cera, only too learn it's not tall enough to be considered impressive.

   

Cera: Petrie, what are you doing upóHey! Have I always had this weird shield thing around my neck?

I like your avatar too, did you draw it yourself?

I'm glad you asked. Yes, I did draw my avatar. (I created the drawing for that specific purpose, and as such am unlikely to change it anytime soon. ) It depicts a Lystrosaurus, a dicynodont (a relative of mammals; not a dinosaur) from the late Permian and early Triassic periods, drawn LBT style (or my nearest approximation of it). Being one of the most ubiquitous inhabitants of the ancient supercontinent from which my screen name is taken, I thought it would make an appropriate avatar.
I'm rather happy with how the illustration turned out (though I'm more than a bit dissatisfied with the colors; the colored pencils I used are too pale and not solid enough a medium in my opinion <_<). To give it the “Land-Before-Timey” look that I wanted, I based features of the eyes and beak off of the frogs and turtles (respectively) from LBT IX, and used Cera’s horn as a reference for the texture on the tusks. I only bothered to draw the head because (1) I wasn’t sure how to apply the LBT style to the rest of the body, (2) I was too darn lazy to try, and (3) I figured that a full-body drawing wouldn’t fit in a 120x120-pixel space anyway (not that I’m complaining about alloted avatar size to you admins out there, mind you ).

As LBT dinosaurs go, Rooter is a very interesting case. His two-and-a-half-minute appearance in the first movie is all that we have ever seen of his species in the entire Land Before Time series. Because of this, and the fact that he is very rarely referenced in LBT media, the exact nature of his species is open to interpretation. However, by comparing Rooter to a range of likely candidates, (plus a bit of logic to help trim down the list,) I think we can come up with a plausible explanation as to his identity.

First off, what do we know about Rooter? He is clearly an ankylosaur, or armored dinosaur (a relatively small one at that, seeing as he is only a little taller than Littlefoot), with a squat, segmented, almost armadillo-like body, short, slightly sprawling legs, three rows of bony spikes or knobs down his back, large subrectangular eyebrows (a feature not known in any dinosaur species I am aware of ), a short, slightly recurved horn on the end of his nose, a second, vaguely pyramidal horn or bump in the center of his snout, and a small tail club with two large, outward-curving spikes.

I suppose if we were to go with the “simplest explanation = best explanation” hypothesis, then we should argue Rooter to be an Ankylosaurus, the most famous armored dinosaur. However, Rooter doesn’t really resemble an Ankylosaurus, especially when we compare him to Mr. Clubtail, who unquestionably belongs to that genus.

I believe the hypothesis that Rooter is a Hylaeosaurus to be somewhat more likely. However, despite bearing the distinction of being the third dinosaur to be scientifically described, Hylaeosaurus is known from relatively poor fossil material: scattered fragments and two partial skeletons, the better of which consists of only the front half of the body minus most of the skull. Because of this, we have fairly little to go on in terms of comparing Rooter physically to a Hylaeosaurus. Hylaeosaurus is known to have sported three rows of armor plates down its back, which is consistent with Rooter's appearance; however, it also possessed large bony spikes on its shoulders and hips, which Rooter clearly lacks. And although it was quite well known in the early days of dinosaur studies, Hylaeosaurus has received little attention from the dinosaur authors and illustrators of the last century (as far as I know, anyway). As such, I rather doubt that Don Bluth would have been likely to stumble across Hylaeosaurus whilst looking for candidates to offer words of wisdom to his sauropod protagonist.

I have my own idea of what kind of dinosaur Rooter could be; a genus of ankylosaur that I suspect very few people are familiar with: Scolosaurus. I base my nomination on the fact that, in the movie, as Rooter turns to leave, the camera cuts to a wide shot in which we briefly see a small club with a pair of spikes at the end of his tail.

Only one family of ankylosaurs, the Ankylosauridae, is known to have possessed clubbed tails (Hylaeosaurus was a polacanthid, and thus probably did not bear a club), and of these, Scolosaurus is the only genus I have ever seen illustrated with a spiked club. Allow me to present this illustration by Czech artist Zden&#283;k Burian
this illustration by Czech artist Zdeněk Burian, depicting Scolosaurus being menaced by the tyrannosaur Gorgosaurus (who bears a distinct family resemblance to a certain Sharptooth, I might add ). From the club on its tail, to the shape of its body, to the posture of its legs, to the segmentation of its armor, this ankylosaur is a dead ringer for Rooter (it even has a little horn on its nose!). In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I learned that Bluth had looked at that exact same picture whilst researching dinosaurs for his movie. In summary, I believe we can safely argue that Rooter is based on a Scolosaurus.

However, there is a twist in my hypothesis: Scolosaurus is a genus that no longer exists. Apparently, it is now considered to be the same dinosaur as Euoplocephalus tutus (In a sense, poor Scolosaurus got off even worse than Brontosaurus; while the latter was sunk into Apatosaurus, it at least got to keep its specific epithetóexcelsusóand some paleontologists have lobbied for its former genus name to be resurrected.) Though I don’t know the details for certain, it would appear that Scolosaurus’s tail spikes actually belonged on its back, and the whole dinosaur was much closer in appearance to Ankylosaurus than to Rooter. So where does that leave us?

If you wanted to be strictly scientific, then you could call Rooter a Euoplocephalus, despite the difference in appearance (It’s the same premise as referring to Littlefoot and his folks as Apatosaurus, despite the fact that they are based on the “invalid” Brontosaurus). Or you could say, “to heck with biological nomenclature and scientific accuracy!” and call him a Scolosaurus. I have one more idea, however: why don’t weóthe LBT fansógive Rooter his own species name? There have been other dinosaurs in the LBT saga that do not appear to belong to any known species (the “Hidden Runner” in the TV series, and a couple of bizarre-looking leafeaters seen lounging under a tree alongside an Ankylosaurus and a Parasaurolophus during the credits of LBT II), and I seem to recall certain fanfiction writers devising their own dinosaur species. As a possible scientific name for Rooter's species, I propose Rhizoryctes hinglei (Rize-or-ick-teez hing-gul-eye), “Hingle’s Root-Digger.” (I personally like to refer to Rooter’s kind as a “digger,” given the implications of his name and the fact that when we first see him, he is buried in the ground.) Whaddaya think?

Well, what do you know? :! Six days, seventeen hours, and twenty minutes since my introductory post, and I'm already at Petrie level! I never thought I could write so fast!