Marcellin Boule (1861–1942) was a French paleoanthropologist, a professor at the National Museum of Natural History and first director of the Institute of Human Paleontology in Paris. Interested at first in geology, he did the first geological map of Madagascar; but after doing excavations in Liguria that unearthed important remains of early Homo sapiens (Grimaldi), he redirected his research toward paleoanthropology. He is especially known for his monographic study of the first complete skeleton of a Neandertal, the “Old Man” from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, about 60,000 years old. Boule's anatomical work on La Chapelle was exemplary, but his interpretations reflected the preconceptions of his epoch.