Gertie the Dinosaur was animated by Winsor McCay in 1914. It wasn't the first animated cartoon, but it is the most memorable of the early animated films.
I read something about a dinosaur being the first ever fully animated cartoon, but there is so many conflicting reports I am not so sure anymore. I may have to do some research on this to get a difinitive answer.
The little-known but pioneering, oldest-surviving feature-length animated film that can be verified (with silhouette animation techniques and color tinting) was released by German film-maker and avante-garde artist Lotte Reiniger, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (aka Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) (1926, Germ.), based on the stories from the Arabian Nights. Reiniger's achievement is often brushed aside, due to the fact that the animations were silhouetted, used paper cut-outs, and they were done in Germany. And the rarely-seen prints that exist have lost much of their original quality. However, the film was very innovative -- it used multi-plane camera techniques and experimented with wax and sand on the film stock.
That was 114 yrs ago? THAT'S AMAZING!!! There are cartoons made in the sixties that don't look that good. There are cartoons made today that don't look that good!
Now there was a guy ahead of his time. Probably took ti'll CGI came along before animation this three-dimensional looking entered the mainstream again.