Dinosaur Zoo for iPad is pretty much just what the name implies – a zoo full of dinosaurs as an iPad app. And who doesn’t love dinosaurs? I’ve never met a kid who didn’t, and not too many grownups either.

Here’s part of the app’s intro in the App Store:

Time to start your own dinosaur zoo of fully animated dinosaurs. You can throw fish to swooping Pterodactyls, tease the Euoplocephalus, try not to get your fingers bitten by the Monolophosaurus – and if you roar, they roar back.

Each dinosaur comes with information from the latest paleontology discoveries, plenty of fascinating facts, prehistoric maps of where they lived and where they died, and spinning 360-degree clay models overseen by the world’s leading paleontologists.

Highlights

– The UI is simple and makes it easy to get around. Single taps move you through different dinosaurs, toggle audio on and off, and toggle popovers with information on each dinosaur to be visible or hidden.

– The graphics and animation in this app are spectacularly good. They feel very realistic and they’re big fun to interact with. You can get the dinos riled up by tapping on the screen around them. When you do, some of them will move threateningly towards where you tapped, and their movements can be quick and aggressive.

If you really get them upset, they’ll even smash the glass.

– The audio is fun as well. The roars and other noises from the dinosaurs are impressive. Even the background noise in each dinosaur’s habitat is impressive – you can hear bird sounds and insects buzzing round.

– It includes some fairly recently discovered dinosaurs, like the Argentinosaurus.

Lowlights

– It’s a very small zoo right now. There are only 6 dinosaurs in it right now.

The developers know that this is the single biggest criticism of the app and the App Store page states that they’re working hard on bringing more dinosaurs to the app as soon as possible.

Two of our staff were eaten trying to bring in a T-Rex but we got her in the end and will introduce her to the zoo as soon as possible.

They also say they’re keeping the app’s price lower until more dinos are added to it.

Overall

Dinosaur Zoo is a very good iPad app, and lots of fun to use. The graphics and animation are superb and well worth its price of admission. If you’ve got kids, this is going to be among their favorites straight away.

Here’s an App Store link for Dinosaur Zoo for iPad; it’s currently priced at $1.99.