Nebraska Man

Nebraska Man was a name applied to Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, a putative species of ape. It was heralded as the first higher primate of North America. It was originally described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1922, on the basis of a tooth found by rancher and geologist Harold Cook in Nebraska in 1917. Although Nebraska man was not a deliberate hoax, the original classification proved to be a mistake, and was retracted in 1927.

Hesperopithecus means "ape of the western world", and haroldcookii was given as the species name in reference to Cook.