Netflix’s The Dinosaurs quickly jumped to the top of the Top 10 TV list, and it’s a great reminder to watch the best dinosaur documentary. Steven Spielberg has released his newest project, focused on the creatures, and it’s quickly been deemed a must-watch.
The director’s foray into nature documentaries began with 2023’s Life on Our Earth, and he followed it up with 2026’s The Dinosaurs, both of which are narrated by Morgan Freeman. While the first one received mixed views from critics, the recent project currently holds a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Dinosaurs’ success can be attributed to society’s ongoing fascination with the prehistoric creatures. Like many others, I am a dinosaur enthusiast. While the Netflix show is entertaining, it’s not the best source of factual information. Anyone interested in learning more needs to check out the best dinosaur documentary of all time, Prehistoric Planet.
Fans Of Netflix’s The Dinosaurs Need To Watch Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet
Netflix’s The Dinosaurs is extremely fascinating but flawed. It’s a great way to get people interested in prehistoric creatures, with the understanding that it’s more entertainment than a documentary. For those who would like a more accurate exploration of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles, Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet is the perfect next watch.
The show caters more to dino nerds than to the wider audience, and it’s frequently considered the gold standard of dinosaur documentaries, both visually and in its relay of information.
Aside from the main episodes, Prehistoric Planet includes four companion videos and a podcast that goes over scientific information and evidence. Most of their speculative behaviors are backed by some form of evidence. They go over a lot of data and research that would be left out of other documentaries. The production team even consulted paleontologists actively working in the field as they brought it to life, giving it much more educational value.
What’s more, the Apple TV documentary presents dinosaurs as normal creatures living their everyday life. Walking with Dinosaurs started this trend, and Prehistoric Planet continued it. Not every scene is a chase scene or a dinosaur fight because they aren’t movie monsters.
Species that are usually portrayed as hostile, like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, have “boring” moments, such as swimming in the water. This makes the story feel less like a Blockbuster movie and more like a nature docuseries.
Prehistoric Planet Is Just As Visually Captivating As The Dinosaurs
The Dinosaurs has been praised for its impressive visuals, and it is a beautiful docuseries. There’s no denying that. However, Prehistoric Planet is just as visually captivating and awe-inspiring. I personally prefer the visuals in the Apple TV documentary, though everyone will have different opinions.
The dinosaurs in Prehistoric Planet look like they’re real, and they move so fluidly. Unlike The Dinosaurs, which shows mostly scaly dinosaurs, the Apple TV docuseries depicts both scaly and feathered creatures, giving it greater realism. The impressive visuals also extend to the other prehistoric animals that lived alongside the dinosaurs. Their habitats look just as lifelike as the creatures, and they did a fantastic job recreating the Cretaceous habitats.
This makes sense given how long they worked on the project and their collaboration with experts at BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit. Prehistoric Planet took ten years to complete, and they used on-set footage and images of modern environments similar to prehistoric landscapes as the basis for their digital habitats.
The VFX team looked at “fossil records, skeletal reconstructions, and we studied many current-day animals that have evolutionary similarities” (via FX Guide) when bringing the prehistoric animals to life. They paid special attention to how they would interact with their environments, which helps explain why the world of Prehistoric Planet feels so immersive.
Apple TV’s Prehistoric Planet Covers The Late Cretaceous Period & The Ice Age
While The Dinosaurs covers everything from the Triassic period to the extinction, Prehistoric Planet is more focused. Rather than covering around 170 million years like Netflix, seasons 1 and 2 of the Apple TV docuseries focus specifically on the Maastrichtian in the late Cretaceous period. This is right before the dinosaur extinction.
Credit to The Dinosaurs, most docuseries give very little time to the Jurassic period, if any. However, the series can feel extremely rushed since it’s trying to cover such a broad scope. Prehistoric Planet’s narrower approach allows it to cover the Cretaceous time period more thoroughly.
Meanwhile, Prehistoric Planet season 3 zooms in on the Pleistocene epoch, aka the Ice Age. This season can’t really be considered a dinosaur documentary, since the dinosaurs didn’t live during the Pleistocene epoch. That said, it’s still an interesting watch, especially for those who want to understand prehistoric creatures beyond dinosaurs.
Prehistoric Planet Is The Most Accurate Dinosaur Documentary
Right off the bat, it’s crucial to say that no dinosaur documentary gets everything right. Every doc, at least up to this point, has some inaccuracies and speculation. As such, the question isn’t “Which is perfect?” but “Which includes the most accurate information and the least blatant inaccuracies?”
While I know a lot about dinosaurs, I am nowhere near an expert on the subject. I can pick apart many inaccuracies while watching the documentaries, and I can speak to the visuals and entertainment value. However, I’d rather defer to the actual experts when it comes to ranking their accuracy against each other. As such, I looked online to see what actual paleontologists thought.
While Netflix’s The Dinosaurs will captivate audiences, there are some glaring errors. I knew that when watching it, and paleontologists on Reddit definitely agreed. Dinosaur Revolution was mentioned as semi-decent, but the consensus is that it presented itself more as a story with characters.
Walking With Dinosaurs was probably the second-most-mentioned series when it came to “best series,” but not as high on accuracy, given that it came out in 1999. Life on Our Planet was one of the stronger contenders in the evolution category, but its designs were critiqued. However, the answer I found most frequently, by far, is Prehistoric Planet.
Looking at the Apple TV documentary, it’s truly a breath of fresh air. Not everything is perfect, but it gets far more right than most dino docs. It provides a good understanding of modern paleontology in the early 2020s, though science moves so fast that discoveries made during post-production couldn’t be included.
What’s more, the supplementary information, combined with the docuseries, makes it an extremely valuable tool for people who want to learn about dinosaurs rather than just see them as monsters in Jurassic Park. They do use inferences for some of the dinosaur behaviors, but they explain how they reached many of those conclusions in the extra content.
Obviously, a decade or two down the line, the information in Prehistoric Planet might not necessarily be the most up-to-date understanding of dinosaurs, much like Walking With Dinosaurs is to us now. For now, the Apple TV show is the go-to.
- Release Date
-
2022 – 2025-00-00
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Directors
-
Adam Valdez
-
David Attenborough
Self – Presenter
