Where the cut footage might be today.

Maybe (and I am kinda going on a limb here) the cut footage could have also been preserved by animators for those scenes. Let me explain:

Jean morel, for example, had animated a deleted scene on Rock-a-doodle, in which the grand duke was baking a skunk pie with an actual skunk in there. He saved a copy for the scene, and recorded the full scene (barring the first shot) off his phone. Judging by the footage quality, the scene itself is in pretty good condition.

He was also an animator for the land before time, and animated both characters Thunderfoot and Sharptooth! So he could have animated the extended sharptooth scenes, and preserved them. That would be nice, but it’s just a theory with no proof.

Another possible theory is that Steven Spielberg could have taken the cut footage and put it in his archive. So maybe we should ask Gary Goldman to go on a search for the cut footage and ask Spielberg for permission to release it for the films 35 year anniversary.