staff of the Observer , who continue to have a perpetual hard-on for Tony Blair, they were not "grunting, club-wielding" ape-men. We should rightly view them as our ancestors. es, strictly speaking, if 2 species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, then they are not really different species, and are more likely just sub-species of the same overall species at best. Do you regard cattle (Bos Taurus) and Bison (Bison Bison) as the same species? What about lions and tigers (where the male offspring are usually sterile but the female offspring usually capable of breeding)? The fertile offspring definition is usually considered obsolete because there's just too much overlap, and because hybridization is itself now thought to play a major role is speciation, particularly in plants. I'm a bit baffled by your comment as I clearly stated. On the biology side, the species concept is problematical, in that there is no satisfactory definition of what a species is. And I provided three links explaining why there was no easy or generally satisfactory definition of a species. You say the "The fertile offspring definition is usually considered obsolete because there's just too much overlap", but cite no reference to back this up. This is what used to be called the biological species concept. It's odd that you tell me about hybridization playing a major part in speciation, especially plants, when I've used the Common Cordgrass Spartina anglica example on these comments sections. Also I got right up the nose of a