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French anatomist and paleoanthropologist. Following his mentor, M. Boule, at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Vallois became the leading proponent during the 1940s and 1950s of the presapiens theory, whereby Neanderthals were seen as not ancestral to modern Homo sapiens. According to this viewpoint, modern humans are derivatives of a separate lineage. Vallois considered the specimens of Pilt-down (England) (prior to their exposure as a forgery in 1953), Fontéchevade (France), and Swanscombe (England) to be evidence of a European presapiens lineage. More recent analyses, however, have shown that these specimens are not significantly different from other contemporaneous hominids.