He believes the Japanese have the bones. His theory: the cases with the fossils were brought to a US army camp in coastal Qinhuangdao, 300 kilometers east of Beijing, before they were seized by the Japanese Army. He launched a Sino-Japanese foundation to search for the fossils, but without success.

Still, other experts believe the bones were sunk with the Japanese freighter Awa Maru, which was torpedoed in 1945, but Zhou disagrees.

In 1972, Chicago financier Christopher Janus offered a reward of US$5,000 for recovery of the fossils. Only the story about a woman, who met Janus on the top of the Empire State Building in New York raised the interest of the public.

She was the widow of a US marine and claimed to own the Peking Man fossils. She brought pictures to Janus that were investigated by researchers, who confirmed they possibly were pictures of the original bones. But suddenly the woman disappeared and was never found again.

Other theories have been more fantastical, but none ever revealed any substantial evidence of the whereabouts of the fossils.

Eighty years after his discovery, Peking Man still gives rise to speculation and mystery. Another piece of a puzzle fell into place in April 2008 when a US-Chinese research team finally achieved results with a new dating method that they had been working on since 2004.

Professor Shen Guanjun from the Nanjing Normal University said, "This method tested the fossils from the layer of rock where the missing skeleton was unearthed."

Peking Man was previously believed to have lived in Zhoukoudian Caves in present-day Fangshan District about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago. But in March, Chinese scientists, including Shen, revealed they were actually 200,000 years older, probably from a mild glacial period.

The new dating has prompted researchers to rethink their theories about Peking Man's life and origins.

But the questions about Peking Man, like his bronze statue, seem to go on.

(Xinhua News Agency December 2, 2009)