 The fossils generated considerable debate among anthropologists in Germany and abroad.The prominent German anthropologist Rudolf Virchow rejected Schaaffhausen's interpretation of the fossils, considering them the pathological remains of an ancient human.However, in 1864 William King, professor of geology at Queens College in Galway, Ireland, presented a paper where he argued the Neanderthal fossils belonged to an extinct species of early human that he named "Homo neanderthalensis".