King believed that the Feldhofer Neanderthal skull discovered by Fuhrott and Schaafhausen differed significantly from all known ancient and modern human crania. In this paper he proposed the name Homo neanderthalensis in order to distinguish the Feldhofer specimen from anatomically modern Homo sapiens; thus this paper is the source of the term “Neanderthal Man.”

King "noted the differences in the curved ribs, the skull muscle attachment suggesting carnivory and suggested that the Neanderthal was a species different from modern humans. He supported a modified version of Darwin's Origin of Species but he gave considerable emphasis to place the Neanderthal as being close and on a "lower scale" than Andaman and Australian aborigines and suggested that like them, the Neanderthal was "incapable of moral and theoistic conception".  (Wikipedia article on William King (geologist) ).