Marcellin Boule

Pierre-Marcellin Boule, known as Marcellin Boule, was a French palaeontologist, geologist and anthropologist born January 1, 1861, in Montsalvy, France, who died July 4, 1942, in Montsalvy, and who published the first detailed analysis of a complete Neanderthal specimen in 1911, based on the skeleton found at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, characterizing it as brutish, bent-kneed and not a fully erect biped; he also argued that eoliths were not human-made tools, and by 1915 had recognized skepticism about the Piltdown remains, noting that the jaw belonged to an ape rather than an ancient human. He served as professor at the Musee National d Histoire Naturelle in Paris from 1902 to 1936, directed the Institut de Paleontologie Humaine in Paris, and edited the journal L Anthropologie from 1893 to 1940. He received the Wollaston Medal in 1933.