Following a breakthrough in the Somerton Man mystery, we asked you to put your burning questions to the experts.
From the science behind the discovery to conspiracy theories that have long followed the case, researcher Derek Abbott, forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, and host of The Somerton Man Mystery Fiona Ellis-Jones, tackled your tricky topics.
"It is amazing to see the public interest, not only in the case itself but also the science behind it," Professor Abbott says.
"All today's questions highlight there is still a lot of work to be done. Some answers may come soon, some may take years, and some may never be answered."
Here are some of your top questions. You can also catch up on the full Q&A over here.
Is this the end of the Somerton Man mystery?
According to Professor Abbott, finding the man's name is just the beginning of the journey.
"It's the key to finding out as much of the history surrounding case as is available," he says.
"I’m sure we’ll keep finding out more for years to come
"As for how he died? My guess is that it will never be fully solved beyond reasonable doubt unless there is a lucky break."
Dr Fitzpatrick adds: "I'm 100 per cent sure we have the right guy."
Why did nobody report the Somerton Man missing?
The details of the case were spread far and wide around the world, says Ellis-Jones — and so too were the autopsy pictures and the images of the plaster cast.
"The case generated a huge amount of publicity at the time and in the subsequent decades since. So it's hard to understand how nobody who knew Carl 'Charles' Webb went to authorities," she says.
"My feeling is that either the family didn’t see any of this coverage or, if they did, perhaps they didn’t want to be linked to him in any capacity.
"That said, from the little we know about Charles, he does appear to have been a bit of a loner. He’d also lost his parents and a sibling in the years preceding 1948. And he was estranged from his wife."
Professor Abbott notes that while photos were widely circulated in Adelaide, they were not in Sydney or Melbourne and "that was the problem".
How did scientists create a family tree for the Somerton Man?
Dr Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogist who lent her expertise to the case, says it's become possible to extract nuclear DNA from hair shafts.
"The DNA is extracted from hair shafts. Once the DNA is extracted, the lab creates an electronic copy of the entire genome — all the DNA that is available," she says.
"The electronic copy is then sent to an expert in bioinformatics who picks out the markers we need to create the data we need for genealogy."
The data is then uploaded to the GEDmatch database to search for matches, Dr Fitzpatrick says.
"The matches are people who share various amounts of DNA with Mr X," she says. The more DNA they share, the closer they are related. The less DNA they share, the more distant they are related.
"The list of matches normally is made up of cousins of various degrees who are related to Mr X.
"The collection of matches is like a big sudoku puzzle. The goal is to arrange the cousins so that they match each other and they match Mr X in a self-consistent way.
"When you have all the cousins lined up properly, the missing piece of the puzzle will be Mr X."
How do you rule people out when you're trying to find a genetic match?
Dr Fitzpatrick says genealogists don't usually "make a list and start excluding".
Rather, they follow clues that lead them to the right person.
"In this case, the top match was a descendant of Thomas Keane. This was consistent with the name T Keane that appeared on some items in the Somerton Man's suitcase," she says.
"Thomas Keane had a date of death. The family had posted funeral notices in the paper so we knew that the date of death was real, and not just estimated. So Somerton Man could not be Thomas Keane himself.
"So we looked for someone else in the family who would have had contact with Thomas Keane and who did not have a date of death. The only person we could find was his wife's brother, Thomas's brother-in-law Carl Webb."
Dr Fitzpatrick says the connection to the top match was on Carl's father's side of the family.
"We continued the genealogy and found a living descendant from Carl's mother's side of the family who would take a DNA test. That confirmation came in last week," she says.
"The only people in the tree who would have those matches on both the mother and the father's sides would be one of the six Webb siblings. Carl had two brothers, but we had their dates of death. The only brother without a date of death was Carl."
Were there other theories about who the Somerton Man could be?
Professor Abbott says they found one other person on the family tree who was in the right age range.
But they couldn't find any details about his death.
"He was a plumber by trade who also played in a brass band as a hobby," Professor Abbott says.
"However, we were able to eliminate him as his maternal line has no DNA connection to the hair sample. We also found a photo of him, and his hairline is totally different."
Could developments in science allow us to determine how the Somerton Man died?
Professor Abbott says the science has come a long way, and "if the body from 1948 could be teleported here, I have no doubt today's pathologists would have no difficulty finding the cause of death".
"The police were only given permission to exhume for identification purposes by the attorney-general," he says.
"I’m sure the present Attorney-General would consider extending permission to perform toxicology analysis if asked."
"However, there is a trade-off between the likelihood of actually finding something after all this time versus the realities of modern crimes that are of higher priority. So, whether it will happen, I do not know."
Professor Abbott also points out that the Somerton Man's autopsy report has gone missing from the case files.
"I’ve tried looking everywhere and the State Archive has nothing. I tried to find the old mortuary notebooks as plan B, but the West Terrace Mortuary no longer exists and I cannot find what happened to its documents when it closed down," he says.
"We need to track down people who used to work there to shed light on those documents and where they might be held. This is a huge mystery.
"I’ve tried talking to modern pathologists to comment on this case, and they all say they can’t do it without a proper autopsy report as everything is too vague otherwise."
How is the book of poetry connected to all this?
While the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám may seem like an obscure book of verse now, Ellis-Jones says it was actually quite common back in the late 40s and early 50s.
"In fact, it was often exchanged as a gift between lovers. In the divorce papers, Dorothy wrote that her husband liked 'death poetry'," she says.
"The book itself was not found with the man's body, but rather in a car down the road. The owner of the car said he'd been parked near the beach with his window down. It appeared that the unknown man had simply thrown the book through the window.
"We know it was his book as the final page was missing. That page — containing the words "Tamam Shud" (meaning "the end", or "it is finished" in Persian) — was hidden deep in the man’s fob pocket.
"It’s hard to see this as anything other than intentional. A suicide note perhaps? Or maybe a final goodbye to a lover."
So what now?
Professor Abbott says his "naive hope is that his name will lead to some clues".
"This is ongoing research, and I’m sure more and more will turn up over the years. It could be a never-ending story. And spy conspiracies may never go away," he says.
"In some sense, an incomplete story is always an engaging one, as it will speak to people in different ways and people will fill in the dots in a way that makes it meaningful to them.
"In the same way that those musical compositions that can be reinterpreted in many ways are the most fun, I’m sure this will happen to the story of the Somerton man.
"There could be several completely different Hollywood versions in years to come."
