Is this a joke? How stable is fossil knowledge in respect to new data points?

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/326

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hu...utionchart.png



In summary:

The knowledge shown in the latter two links was - at least to my impression - more or less solid stuff one could reasonable assume to be mostly correct. The first link effectively says that the latter two are close to completely wrong - based on five skulls found.



Five?

Realy?



Thats a joke, any body of knowledge that in light of just 5 data points could turn out to be completely wrong, is in my eyes not solid stuff, but lousy guesswork, which should certainly never end up anywhere but in specialist scientific papers, because school books and the like should only comprise the realiable stuff.



So the question:

How reliable is the fossil knowledge?

Could 5 datapoints wipe out what we think we know about dinosaurs? The evolution of land animals? Birds? The idea that only due to dinosaur extinction small mamals had a chance to "take over the world"?

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