Fontéchevade is a cave in Charente, France, which contains Palaeolithic remains from 200,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Unlike Neanderthals and Homo sapiens of the time, the frontal skull fragment lacks any development of a brow ridge.

This feature led French paleoanthropologists of the time to propose the "pre-sapiens" theory, in which the line to modern humans was said to have branched off before the appearance of the Neanderthals.

Subsequent research has cast doubt on the importance of the Fontéchevade evidence.

[citation needed] One of the fossils may be from an immature individual or from a period of time later than its surrounding deposits.