I want to make something abundantly clear right at the start.

We have no clear, unambiguous evidence that raptors hunted in coordinated packs.

Fair, we know of trackways made by Velociraptor-like dinosaurs that show multiple individuals moving in the same direction. What such gregariousness meant to these animals, we have no idea. That is the sticking point. We have no direct evidence of multiple carnivorous dinosaurs acting together to hunt, kill, and consume prey, said prey most often visualized as a large herbivore that would require a wolf pack-like mentality to bring down.

The fierce imagery remains an echo of early ideas about Deinonychus. Ideas that have been questioned and critiqued for at least 20 years now. Bonebeds full of partial Deinonychus bones, even in association with the ever-hapless herbivore Tenontosaurus, are more consistent with accidental co-burial and, at best, free-for-all feeding more similar to what we see among Komodo dragons and Nile crocodiles than the more mammalian hunting strategies of lion prides and spotted hyena clans. As any paleontologist knows, though, it’s very difficult to argue with what everyone’s already taken in as fact thanks to Jurassic Park.

Fitting, then, that the third episode of the new Walking With Dinosaurs, “Band of Brothers,” should partly focus on a large Velociraptor relative found just as Jurassic Park was big in theaters - Utahraptor. The dinosaur was one of the largest of dromaeosaurs, an animal that was immediately employed upon discovery to quell the reaction to Jurassic Park that the movie’s raptors were too big. And yet we’re still just getting to know the animal. An immense, nine-ton block found near Moab, Utah is gradually giving up our most detailed look yet at these bulky dromaeosaurs. Paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who not only named Utahraptor but has overseen the “megablock” from excavation to prep work, has repeatedly claimed that the huge mass of sandstone was a quicksand trap that gathered the remains of multi-generation Utahraptor packs just like La Brea tar trapped Smilodon. We’re dealing with fan favorites here, and everyone loves to see dinosaurs do what they’ve been famed to do.

The struggle is when we don’t know very much about our star dinosaurs. It’s a tension that runs through the third episode’s depictions of Utahraptor and the plot-central Gastonia, both dinosaurs presented as intimately social despite the fact that we have no clue what brought them together, why, for how long, and what their interactions would have looked like. It’s a flimsy association, making “eternal enemies” on the basis of being fossilized together. It makes for a wobbly third entry in the series.

Our dinosaur cast for episode three is a little thin. We have our core Gastonia, “George,” and his herd. They are harassed throughout by a Utahraptor pack, and we get a brief hadrosaur cameo thanks to the ornithopod Planicoxa. It may not have stood out so much if we knew more about these dinosaurs, their behavior and relationships, but episode three’s attempts to find a story don’t have much science to rest on. Which makes me wonder if a more up-to-date vision of Utahraptor would have led to a different narrative.

Even though Gastonia is the episode’s central species, the herbivores are given purpose by the supposed cunning and destructive powers of Utahraptor. Our protagonists need antagonists, based on nothing else than finding the jumbled fossils of one species near the other. Once the arms race has been decided upon, however, the story spins out to pure speculation that shows how even scientists sometimes fail to ground truth claims and base what they say about dinosaurs on the movies.

Paleontologists have spent many years going, honestly, a bit overboard with the supposed destructive abilities of dromaeosaur claws. The dinosaurs have regularly been envisioned as climbing and eviscerating other dinosaurs since the 1980s, at least. (“Maybe, slice open the belly?” paleontologist Josh Lively jokes in a bit of canned dialog for the show about a cast of a Utahraptor claw.) In the past 15 years, however, the picture has shifted. Even large dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus and Utahraptor appear to have hunted smaller prey. The dinosaurs likely used their claws more like modern red-tailed hawks do, to incapacitate and restrain while the jaws go to work. Hatchling Gastonia would be at risk, but George and the other subadults featured in the program were already well outside what we’d expect for a Utahraptor prey envelope given our revised view of their hunting abilities.

The same lack of solid science affects the images of Gastonia, as well. Early in the show, George works his way into a Gastonia herd through a head-pushing contest. The imagery would seem to stem from the fact that multiple Gastonia are sometimes found together, taken as a sign that the dinosaurs formed herds. As ever, though, taphonomy is key - the critical analysis that could determine whether the animals were together and died in a sudden event or represent an accumulation over time in an area due to drought or other environmental condition. As with Utahraptor, we have a small shred of scientific backing for gregarious behavior. What that looked like is anyone’s guess. WWD imagines one possibility, yet delivers everything with such certainty that viewers might mistakenly think we have solid evidence for the behaviors described. It’s hard to fault WWD on this when many natural history programs - even about living animals - regularly form storylines after the fact, dramatizing and sanitizing nature in the process, but then again the showrunners could have selected another Mesozoic setpiece with more scientific backing.

On the one hand I can’t blame the show for wandering further away from the science. It’s a 48-minute program and the show selected two dinosaurs that, truly, we know very little about. Despite the number of Utahraptor and Gastonia bones that have been excavated, the paleocology of their habitat, the growth and behavior of their species, and a great deal more remains unknown. Kirkland and colleagues published a geologic paper on the much-talked-about Utahraptor megablock in 2016, for example, but no peer-reviewed research updating the dinosaur has yet been published. The block’s had a rocky history - no pun intended - facing difficulties in storage, preparation, and funding, but it’s nevertheless striking how many years supposed conclusions from the block have been presented to the public when a scientific analysis has not appeared. It’s difficult to discuss what evidence there may or may not be for social behavior in the 9-ton lump when the science hasn’t been shown yet. The fact makes the ending for the show’s Utahraptor dramatic, a group unknowingly running into quicksand to escape a fire, but, as it presently stands, the conclusion is pure fantasy.

“Band of Brothers” took a risk on telling a dinosaur story that doesn’t have a large body of evidence yet behind it. The characters are charismatic, and I’ll never complain about seeing my beloved eastern Utah deserts. I don’t think the risk paid off, however. The episode seems closer to what we used to think of Utahraptor in Gastonia in the 1990s than what we understand about these dinosaurs now. It’s a complicated thing, the desire to bring fans a favorite when we can’t answer many basic questions about the animal.

When we finally start to see analyses of Utahraptor, and what relationship the dinosaur had to Gastonia, I have a feeling the story’s going to look very different from what was presented in “Band of Brothers.” The fossils are coming out of the ground. Experts still need to take the time to speak to them.