Charles Dawson, a solicitor and amateur fossil hunter, was the man who found the most significant specimens at Piltdown. He was assisted by his friend Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the British Museum (top).

Their discoveries were made at two sites � one recorded, the other kept secret. But after Dawson's death from septicaemia in 1916, nothing new was produced at Piltdown.

Does this point to Dawson as the perpetrator of the hoax? Did he have accomplices? Woodward or Hinton, perhaps?

Even 50 years after modern techniques of analysis showed the specimens to be fakes, the greatest whodunit in science remains unsolved.