"The Land Before Time" phenomenon

"The Land Before Time." The movie I would watch over and over again as a child. The gang of five, Littlefoot, Cera (my personal favorite), Spike, Ducky, and Petrie were adventure seekers and my childhood heroes. Oh, and let us not forget about little Chomper who is born later in the series. The only problem with "The Land Before Time" is it is not an actual representation of what living in prehistoric times was like. Of course, I like many other children still tie "The Land Before Time" to almost every dinosaur lesson we encounter. It is arguable that the I remember few dinosaur species outside of the ones I first learned about in the movie.

This movie, like many others, is an example of common misconceptions that arise in children's film and literature. As teachers, we must be careful to distinguish the difference between a hollywood film and reality.

In dinosaur reality, Littlefoot never even existed (I know, I was upset too). The Brontosaurus was in fact a name given to an Apatosaurus skeleton missing part of its skull. Well, this explains the "flat head" mentality in the movie... Oh, and that TREX the gang of five escaped from? This could not have happened because the TREX was nearly 160 million years removed from the time period of the movie. You see, the movie suggests that all dinosaur species lived at the exact same time--that the dinosaur period was only for a few years. This is not true, there are millions of years of history of dinosaurs some of which were extinct long before others.

This one movie has effected my entire lives thinking on dinosaurs. Even in teaching science I find myself trying to compare the paleontology information with what I remember from "The Land Before Time."

A few other little corrections from the movie:

1. TREXs actually can swim contrary to what the movie suggests

2. Little Petrie was not a dinosaur at all. In fact, he was a flying reptile.

3. Dinosaurs never migrated west. This is a common misconception that the earth just dried up one day and BOOM dinosaurs were extinct. We have scientific proof that it did not happen this way...

4. And sadly, dinosaurs do not have ghosts. Little foot would not have been able to see his mom in the sky

So, now that I have ruined all of your childhood loving moments of dinosaurs (so very sorry) remember to use this as an example to think twice about what you use as an activating strategy in your class. I do believe every child should know the joy of "The Land Before Time," but they do need to be made aware of the misconceptions.