Nebraska Man

Nebraska Man is a supposed fossil primate of North America. In 1917, rancher and geologist Harold Cook discovered a fossil tooth, apparently an upper molar, in Miocene deposits near Agate, Nebraska. He submitted it in March 1922 to Henry Fairfield Osborn, a distinguished paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who announced it as the first anthropoid ape fossil discovered in the Americas.

In 1927, after a few other scientists had tentatively accepted it, the tooth was properly identified as belonging to a fossil peccary (Prosthennops crassigenus).

Scientific name

• Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, given by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1922.