With this caveat, then, let's go back to the basic fossil evidence of our own origins and emergence, bearing in mind our historical interpretive burden. If you really want to appreciate the magnitude of the confusion about human evolution and understand why there is so much controversy among evolutionists, you should read The Fossil Trail for yourself. Tattersall is remarkably candid when he explains how fossil remains are interpreted. You look at them long enough, and they speak to you. Nowadays I realize that this response has a great deal more merit than it would appear to on the surface.
Most people think that fossils are the strongest argument in favor of the theory of evolution.
In fact, the fossil record contains a very strong argument against evolution. That's why the scientists who study fossils were among the first to reject the neo-Darwin synthetic theory of evolution. Tattersall himself, along with paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Steven Jay Gould, developed the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. The Synthesis, as you will recall, elegantly explained all evolutionary phenomena in terms of the gradual accretion of genetic changes in evolving lineages, all under the guiding hand of natural selection. In turn this implied that species, while discrete units in space, should lose definition in the dimension of time.