The PBS show “Nature: Raising the Dinosaur Giant” tells the story of a group of paleontologists trying to reconstruct a fossil found in Patagonia.  What makes this story exciting enough to deserve its own documentary? First of all, dinosaurs, second of all, the 200+ bones, stumbled upon by a very lucky shepard, were once the only thing holding up an animal that could easily reach 130 foot trees.  It was called Titanosaur. In the paleontology community, this news was groundbreaking. Before this, there had only been few recorded findings of Titanosaur bones. 12 to be exact. These bones had really only given scientists enough evidence to prove that these animals existed.  This film follows the process required to bring this animal “back to life”. We watch the team be continually amazed at every new discovery they make, soon realizing that they may have discovered the largest animal to ever walk the earth.

The movie itself explains the scientific terms and the importance of this discovery well.  However, without the commentary from David Attenborough this documentary would not have been nearly as interesting to watch for someone who isn’t interesting dinosaur.  The whole thing is written like a news story. Attenborough interviews the experts who are in charge of every detail of this reconstruction. From the elephants, giraffes, and ostriches used to get an idea of how this animal's muscles moved, to the college interns who dug its bones out of the ground.  One thing that could have been improved is the lighting when David Attenborough is speaking by himself, holding a model, in the warehouse in particular. There are many points in the film when Attenborough is diving deeper into concepts introduced in the film that not all viewers are familiar with, or showing off different models.  During these times, he’s very poorly lit. It makes it hard to focus on the information he’s trying to convey.

The rest of the film is gorgeous.  They’re only inside for a fraction of the film, and they take full advantage of the landscape around the archeological dig. The colors of the sky and the mountains around sunset are breathtaking, and the hot springs make for a great shot.  They use the shots for B roll, and for nice places to put Mr Attenborough if he's not saying something particularly interesting.

Another thing they did really well for this film was the animation.  It's hard to imagine how large an animal like that must have been, so seeing a digital representation of it next to an average sized man helped put things in perspective.  The representation of titanosaurus’s heart, for example, was very close to Attenborough as he explained that the heart would have had to have been 3 times the size of a grown man, nearly 6 but around to be able to pump nearly a ton of blood.

This is definitely a documentary suitable for anyone who wants to kill an hour and learn something they hadn't known before. It’s an eye opening film that really puts the age of the world into perspective, and shows how scary Cretaceous Park would have been.