Here's an example of bump mapping vs. displacement:

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1020351

And the finished image:

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=574672

I think that I read somewhere that P6 can use animated textures ....

You read correctly. Materials can be animated procedurally, or with Movie nodes (.avi or QuickTime, depending upon platform). Poser once supported animated GIFs, but they took that feature out.