Pierre-Marcellin Boule (1 January 1861 – 4 July 1942), better known as merely Marcellin Boule, was a French

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of foss ...

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...

, and

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms an ...

Early life and education

Pierre-Marcellin Boule was born in

Montsalvy Montsalvy (; oc, Montsauvi) is a commune in the Cantal department in south-central France. History Montsalvy was founded around 1070 as a monastery with a Sauveté, (a refuge zone around a church or a chapel by several boundary markers) b ...

, France.

Career

Boule was a professor at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (1902–36) and "for many years director of the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Paris." He was an editor (1893–1940) of the journal ''L’Anthropologie'' (and contributed articles to it) and was the founder of two other scientific journals. Boule studied and published in 1910 the first analysis of a complete

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an Extinction, extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ag ...

specimen. The fossil discovered in

La Chapelle-aux-Saints La Chapelle-aux-Saints (; oc, La Chapela daus Sents) is a commune in the Corrèze department in central France. History Neanderthal skeleton The La Chapelle-aux-Saints cave, bordering the Sourdoire valley, revealed many archeological artifacts ...

was an old man, and Boule characterized it as brutish, bent-kneed and not a fully erect biped. In an illustration Boule commissioned, the Neanderthal was characterized as a hairy

gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four ...

-like figure with

opposable The thumb is the first digit of the hand, next to the index finger. When a person is standing in the medical anatomical position (where the palm is facing to the front), the thumb is the outermost digit. The Medical Latin English noun for thumb ...

toes, according to a skeleton which was already distorted with

arthritis Arthritis is a term often used to mean any disorder that affects joints. Symptoms generally include joint pain and stiffness. Other symptoms may include redness, warmth, swelling, and decreased range of motion of the affected joints. In som ...

. 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. He was one of the first to argue that

eolith An eolith (from Greek "''eos''", dawn, and "''lithos''", stone) is a knapped flint nodule. Eoliths were once thought to have been artifacts, the earliest stone tools, but are now believed to be geofacts (stone fragments produced by fully natu ...

s were not manmade. Boule also expressed some scepticism about the

Piltdown man The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains ...

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. However, the Piltdown forgery has been characterised as providing evidential support for Boule's "branching evolution" conclusions drawn from his Neanderthal research — research which is likewise said to have "prepar dthe international community for the appearance of a non-Neanderthal fossil such as Piltdown Man."

Personal life and demise

Boule died at age 81 in the same town where he was born, Montsalvy, France.

References and sources

External links

* 1861 births 1942 deaths People from Cantal French paleontologists Wollaston Medal winners {{france-scientist-stub