Reconstructing human evolution: Achievements, challenges, and opportunities.

This contribution reviews the evidence that has resolved the branching structure of the higher primate part of the tree of life and the substantial body of fossil evidence for human evolution. It considers some of the problems faced by those who try to interpret the taxonomy and systematics of the human fossil record. How do you to tell an early human taxon from one in a closely related dade? How do you determine the number of taxa represented in the human dade? How can homoplasy be recognized and factored into attempts to recover phylogeny? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]