Piltdown man was discovered in 1912 and was hailed to be the missing link between man and ape. In truth it was merely an orangutan jaw pieced with a 620 year old human skull cap. It was hailed as the missing link for over 40 years until it was finally recognized as a hoax . During the '70's, it was found that the teeth actually belonged to a very old ape. Rather than dismissing the fossil as ape, it was reclassified under it's current name.
Anthropologists hate to throw a way a good bone.
Once thought to be a hominid ancestor, this gigantic ape is now classified under the category of orangutans. A symposium was arranged for the fossil discovery to be discussed. Luckily, for the discoverers before the symposium occurred, it was found that their hominid fossil was actually the skull cap of a four month old donkey.