FMP9 crash seems to have reverted my database?

Struggling to recover lost data due to a problem this afternoon, hope the wise ones here can help.

Been hosting two databases (DB) via IWP using FMP9 Advanced and a MacPro for months. Today while working on database 2 trying to run a new report, FMP crashed completely and immediately.

No problem, restarted FMP and opened up both files. DB#2 recovered fine, dB#1, not so much.

DB #1 says has lost all data, script and layout changes back to Feb 25th (about a month). Indeed I have hardcopy proof in front of me of reports I ran from FMP yesterday, but that data is not to be found.

Now the real oddity. I backup this directory every day, and every backup of DB#1 in the backup archives says "last modified Feb 25th", back to, obviously Feb 25th. I panicked about now. :

Theory 1: all I could think was that I was mistakenly using a different file, not the backed up one. But a complete hard drive check (by file name) and even Open Recent... all find only the incomplete file or one of its backups.

Theory 2: I have the files synced to 2 different machines via DropBox (cloud backup service). I opened up my laptop (second machine) and turned off all syncing, opened the file and same mystery: Feb 25th file.

I feared a syncing issue, which woudl explain the synced file being old, but not all the backups.

I have tried RECOVERY which says it recovers a number of KB, but does not change the record count.

Whatever file I have been working with (and all my team) for the last month existed SOMEWHERE?

Does FMP use some sort of caching? (e.g. hidden files in the system). Does it not save consistently to the file itself?