DEPT. OF SCIENCE REINVENTING THE DINOSAUR

A documentary renews our fascination with our feared and loved precursors.

- RIVKA GALCHEN

Dan Tapster grew up watching David Attenborough’s nature documentaries with his mother, in a village outside London. “It was appointment viewing,” he said. “She still claims to be Attenborough’s No. 1 fan.” A few years after graduating from university with a biology degree, and following a stint leading nature tours in Peru, Tapster found himself working on Attenborough’s films, first “The Life of Mammals” and later “Planet Earth.” Attenborough’s documentaries are celebrated for their exceptional footage, often of little-known species or of rarely filmed behaviors: the kodkod of Patagonia, the swarming of red-billed queleas over the African savannah, the dark-of-night hunts (captured with infrared cameras) of big cats. In a sense, viewers get to see what they cannot actually see.