About two weeks ago (I'm bad with time) a paper was released that showed that there were genetic traces of H. erectus in H. longi (Denisovans) that proved that both species of Homo breed with one another and produced FERTILE offspring. I had some thoughts on the genus Homo as a whole that I wanted to share here.

Genetically it has been proven that:

Neanderthals breed with Homo sapiens and produced FERTILE offspring; Neanderthals breed with Denisovans and produced fertile offspring; H. sapiens breed with Denisovans and produced fertile offspring; Denisovans breed with H. erectus and produced fertile offspring!

Now from fossils there also has been suggested that also Neanderthals and H. sapiens breed with H. erectus, hence there have been found fossil skulls and postcranial material that show traits of BOTH species (both, H. neanderthalensis and H. erectus, and H. sapiens and H. erectus).

You know what that implies? Well in classic biology the definition of a species is that their members CAN produce FERTIL offspring with one another but not with members of another species.

Now all of this implies that all the different homo species mentioned here are in reality members of ONE single species and should be reclassified as follows: Homo sapiens sapiens; Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; Homo sapiens longi (Denisovans) and Homo sapiens erectus.

They are all nothing more than subspecies of one Homo species!

What do you think?

Thought on the genetically proven interbreeding between Denisovans and H. erectus