When I was a child, the Natural History Museum in London was a hugely exciting place to go in the holidays, especially for the dinosaur exhibits and other extinct creatures.

It still is today, having taken our sons there and seen the sparkle in their eyes. Now there’s a new iPhone and iPad app giving a taste of the museum’s marvels. It’s called NHM Alive, and has been released as an interactive accompaniment to Sir David Attenborough’s latest TV series – Natural History Museum Alive.

The show brings some of the museum’s creatures back to life in animated form, turning them from bones to (virtual) flesh and blood. The NHM Alive app – published by Colossus Productions – follows that pattern too.

Here’s how that works: you and/or your child (it’s an all-ages app) explore some of the rooms in the Natural History Museum by swiping between extinct exhibits: giant moa, arcaeopteryx, sabre-toothed cat, American mastodon, gigantophis, dodo and ‘Dippy’, the diplodocus model that sits in the museum’s central hall.

In each scene, you can pop out a menu from the top-left to read about the creature and related research topics, see them on a historical timeline, and see a map of their location in the museum itself. If you’re actually there at the time, you can also enter codes found next to the exhibits to unlock video clips, and there are 360-degree panoramas to look at too.

The real fun, though, comes when swiping down in a scene to switch it from ‘day’ to ‘night’ mode. The screen goes dark, but holding a finger on the screen illuminates a torch, enabling you to watch the animated creature wander around the room, while Attenborough tells you about it.

It’s a large app – 954MB in file size – but well worth it for children who are excited about natural history, not to mention parents like us who’ve never lost the buzz.

“It’s really exciting to take these stories and bring them to a new young audience via a digital platform which allows you to explore these extraordinary extinct creatures in a way people have never been able to before,” said Attenborough as the app was launched.

NHM Alive costs £3.99 for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store.