Thanks to all for your input about the transAtlantic Smaragdia. Especially interesting is Tom's observation:

"Today if you dump a dozen specimens from the Mediterranean and a
dozen from the Caribbean into a single pile, they can quite easily be
separated morphologically (they differ in both shell shape and
color/pattern)."

Is the door then still open just a crack for the possibility of two species separated by 5 million years?

When I was a kid, the answer could have been determined by simply dropping specimens from the respective populations in an aquarium and seeing if they breed. That definition wouldn't pass muster any more, I guess.

David Kirsh
Durham, NC

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction.
 Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain

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