Places of Fancy

Rich paleontological sites, such as the Djadochta Formation in Mongolia (below via Rob Oo), would have been the 'Great Valley' in 'The Land Before Time' (above via Universal Pictures) Giants ruled the earth long before recorded history. We got a glimpse of their cute hatchlings in "The Land Before Time," but there's just a dinosaur-sized bone of contention in the beloved 1988 film.  Figuring out where its characters would have thrived begs the question: Is "The Land Before Time" (pre)historically accurate? To borrow a line from the movie's OST, no, they did not really hold on together. The Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus, represented by Littlefoot and Spike in the Don Bluth classic, would have lived during the Late Jurassic Period, roughly 161.5 to 145 million years ago. They would have flat-out missed the rest of the cast.  The likes of Cera (Triceratops), Ducky (Saurolophus), Petrie (Pteranodon), Chomper (Tyrannosaurus), and Ruby (Oviraptor) wo...