The twelfth film in the Land Before Time series, released on February 27, 2007.
An important event is coming up: the Day of the Flyers, when all the young flyers will have to fly in formation to prove themselves. Petrie is having a hard time preparing, as he flies better solo.
Meanwhile, a strange, feathered creature named Guido appears in the Valley, and Littlefoot and friends try to help him figure out what he is. On top of that, Cera's family gets a new addition when her father and Tria have a baby.
Tropes:
- Be Yourself: The movie's Aesop; Petrie learns from Guido that he should stand out from the crowd instead of being like everyone else.
- A Day in the Limelight: This is the second movie after The Land Before Time VII: The Stone of Cold Fire to have Petrie in a starring role.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "Many changes had occurred on this day of changes," as pointed out by MarzGurl.
- Goofy Feathered Dinosaur: Guido the Microraptor, who is a nervous and awkward Plucky Comic Relief.
- Informed Species: Guido is supposed to be a Microraptor, but with his toothless parrot-like beak, lack of claws (including its raptorial claw), and more humanoid frame he barely looks like the real animal.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: At the beginning of the film, Petrie accidentally messes up during practice for the titular event and later that night, he gets chewed out by his angry siblings.Petrie's sibling 1: Petrie, you'll never get it right!
Petrie's sibling 2: Yeah, you don't pay attention!
Petrie's sibling 3: You flap your wings at the wrong time!
Petrie's sibling 1: You go up when we go down, and you go down when we go up!
All siblings: You're hopeless! - Savage Spinosaurs: A Spinosaurus serves as the main antagonist.
- Shown Their Work: Rather than sitting on Tricia's egg, Cera's parents incubate it by covering it with grass. It's theorized that this is exactly what certain dinosaurs did in real life (the fermenting vegetation would have warmed the eggs, and a Triceratops would likely be heavy enough to crush its eggs if it tried to sit on them.) And while it might be lucky coincidence, we also see a baby pterosaur able to fly from the moment it hatches out of its egg, which lines up very well with recent ideas about how young pterosaurs developed.
- Toothy Bird: Guido, the Microraptor is a sort of inversion. He looks like your usual toothy bird, only having teeth in certain instances. He really should have had teeth the whole time. Sharp ones. He also lacked the big toe claw that microraptors had. The movie acted like he was just a weird-looking modern bird instead of the tiny deinonychosaur that he was.
- Was Too Hard on Him: When Petrie's siblings get mad at him for ruining their practice for their flying, Guido steps in and try to tell them not to be so hard on him.
