The observed baryon asymmetry of the universe is suitably created in thermal leptogenesis through the out-of-equilibrium decay of N1, the lightest of the three heavy singlet neutral fermions which anchor the seesaw mechanism for obtaining small Majorana neutrino masses. However, this scenario suffers from the incompatibility of a generic lower bound on the mass of N 1 and the upper bound on the reheating temperature of the universe after inflation. A modest resolution of this conundrum is proposed. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.