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Pierre-Marcellin Boule (1 January 1861 – 4 July 1942), better known as merely Marcellin Boule, was a French palaeontologist, geologist, and anthropologist.[1]
Marcellin Boule | |
|---|---|
 1929 Autochrome by Georges Chevalier | |
| Born | 1 January 1861 |
| Died | 4 July 1942 (aged 81) |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 Neanderthal anatomy |
| Awards | Wollaston Medal (1933) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Palaeontology, Geology, Anthropology |
Boule was a professor at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (1902–1936) and "for many years director of the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Paris."[1] He was an editor (1893–1940) of the journal L’Anthropologie and was the founder of two other scientific journals.[1]
Boule studied and published in 1911 the first analysis of a complete Neanderthal specimen.[2] The fossil discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints was an old man, and Boule characterized it as brutish, bent-kneed and not a fully erect biped.[3] In an illustration Boule commissioned, the Neanderthal was characterized as a hairy gorilla-like figure with opposable toes, according to a skeleton which was already distorted with arthritis. As a result, Neanderthals were viewed in subsequent decades as being highly primitive creatures with no direct relation to anatomically modern humans. Later re-evaluations of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton have roundly discredited Boule's initial work on the specimen.[4]
He was one of the first to argue that eoliths were not human made.[5]
Boule also expressed some skepticism about the Piltdown Man discovery — later revealed to be a hoax. As early as 1915, Boule recognized that the jaw belonged to an ape rather than an ancient human.[6] However, the Piltdown forgery has been characterized as providing evidential support for Boule's "branching evolution" conclusions drawn from his Neanderthal research — research which is likewise said to have "prepar[ed] the international community for the appearance of a non-Neanderthal fossil such as Piltdown Man."[4]
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Boule died at age 81 in Montsalvy in France, the same town where he was born.[1]
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