Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet looks so good it feels like a real nature documentary

I giggled in delight when the first tyrannosaurus swam onto the screen. I was a science editor taking a serious look at this nature show and I thought it was a dinosaur.

If we made Planet Earth 66 million years ago, what would it look like? The result is stunningly good-looking since the producers have not, in fact, managed to invent time travel or bring dinosaurs back to life.

It's a lot of movie magic that makes the five-episode series seem like a nature documentary, even though its main subjects haven't been swimming the seas, soaring the skies, or stalking through forests since the end of the Cretaceous period. Some of the heads looked robotic, and some of the herds had a decidedly animated feel. The film's attention to detail drowned out the few visual misses. Even if every movement, every shadow, is engineered, the dinosaurs seem real, even if there is a storm or a dappled sunlight hitting their feathers. The last time a leap forward in dino-realism was achieved was 29 years ago.

Since the second mention of the movie, it's time to talk about the titanosaur. At the time it was released, it was amazing. Dinosaurs were portrayed as science at the time and inspired a generation of paleontologists. A huge wave of discoveries made in the decades since have been made by that generation. Some of the science in the original movie is out of date because of so many discoveries. The golden age of paleontology is what we are now living in. We now know a lot more about dinosaurs than we did 29 years ago.

Dinosaurs with feathers, fights between species, and even how their digestive systems worked are just some of the discoveries that play out on the screen. We will see a lot of discussion from the paleontology community about the series, including what parts were speculation, which parts were probably right, and what people disagree with the most, and some of that discussion has already been going on behind the scenes.

Every scene for Prehistoric Planet involved a lot of research and discussion about animals that we see today.

The pace of research may change by the year, according to Favreau. It is not done for spectacle. This is done in the science.

There were some questions that the team could not answer with journal papers alone. The film often found an answer.

We have to decide whether to show the plesiosaur paddles as stiff when they flap them or whether they were a bit floppy. A paper from researchers showed that the interpretation of the biomechanics that the animators noticed was probably correct.

The variety of ancient creatures on display is a reflection of the depth of research. The T. rex has a pack of junior T. rex. The velociraptors are here in full-feathered glory. Ornithomimus, the thieving nest-building dinosaurs with bright red sleeves and dark mohawks, is also present. Barbaridactylus has a giant antler on its head. Beelzebufo is a giant frog that will haunt my dreams. The charismatic megafauna are not the only ones to make the cut. Supporting characters include ancient plants and organisms.

At its core, this is still a nature documentary complete with the king of all natural history narrators: David Attenborough. The series has the same beats and stories that you will find in any Attenborough documentary, even though it doesn't have all of the same creatures we see today. Cute young dinosaurs are trying to get by in a cruel world and there are battles to the death.

The scenes with young dinosaurs in danger definitely hit harder than they ever did in my pre- kid days. I may have yelled, "Don't you dare hurt that baby, David!" more than once. There are hormones.

The series drives home how little has changed in 66 million years. The planet has changed, but the same forces are still working. Life forms still have to contend with wild events like storms, wildfires, and even mosquitoes as the seasons are still turning. The dinosaurs feel just as alive as any bird or rhino or tiger that we see today, even though all that remains of them are fossils. Life finds a way with the right technology and research.

On Monday, May 23th, Apple TV will show the new show, "Prehistoric Planet". The five episodes will be released daily.