KEY POINTS:
A Coca-Cola bottle may help police determine when a person whose remains were found in the bush west of Auckland died.
Skeletal remains were found by pig hunters in dense bush in the Waitakere Ranges last month.
Police said they had no clue to the person's identity and the body may have been there for 20 years.
A Coke bottle found near the body may give some idea of time, they said.
Detective Sergeant Roger Small said police were trying to find out when the bottle was made to give them a better idea of when it may have been taken into the bush.
"It is a specific Coke bottle manufactured over a specific time."
He said once the bottle had been identified police might be able to further narrow the timing by identifying car keys found near the body and looking at records for cars towed from the Arataki Visitors' Centre, a few hundred metres away.
Some medication was also found near the remains and that may also hold a clue to the person's identity, Mr Small said.
"I am quite confident we will identify the person," Mr Small said.
Several names had already been given to police by members of the public, but none had been of great help.
A post mortem examination on the skeleton revealed it was a man, a smoker, probably in his 40s and probably European, although he could not rule out the man may have been part Maori.
He was strongly built, about 172 cm tall.
- NZPA
