The mystery of a tiny skeletal mummy that has captured the public’s imagination and baffled scientists for years may have finally been solved.
The body is just 6 inches long and likely a fetus; however, it has a skeletal structure that appears to be that of a 6-year-old child. Since the mummy had 10 pairs of ribs instead of 12 and an elongated head, some believed it could be an alien.
But DNA tests confirmed that the skeleton, nicknamed “Ata” as it was discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 2003, was human.
“I had heard about this specimen through a friend of mine, and I managed to get a picture of it,” Garry Nolan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, said in a news release. “You can’t look at this specimen and not think it’s interesting; it’s quite dramatic.”
The analysis by Nolan and a team of other researchers confirmed that the skeleton was not an alien, nor a non-human primate as some had speculated. It was the fetus of a girl who had suffered from a host of severe genetic mutations. Some of those mutations had never been linked to bone or developmental problems.
Nolan told the Guardian that Ata was either stillborn or died right after birth.
“She was so badly malformed as to be unable to feed,” he said. “In her condition, she would have ended up in the neonatal ICU, but given where the specimen was found, such things were simply not available.”
The tests also showed that the remains weren’t ancient, as some had theorized, but only about 40 years old.
Nolan said:
“While this started as a story about aliens, and went international, it’s really a story of a human tragedy. A woman had a malformed baby, it was preserved in a manner and then ‘hocked’ or sold as a strange artefact. It turns out to be human, with a fascinating genetic story from which we might learn something important to help others. May she rest in peace.”
“DNA differences like this are useful to help us diagnose children and adults with ‘undiagnosed’ disorders,” Atul Butte, director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco, told CBS news.
“More and more children’s hospitals are able to study patients and better understand what differences in their DNA might be leading to their conditions or disorders,” Butte added. “And the ones we learned here can get added to the catalogs for future reference.”
Clarification: Language in this story has been amended to clarify that people had speculated the skeleton may have been an alien or a primate, but not a human primate.
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Debbie C
I read this on Coast to Coast AM website.
I always thought it was made from plastic.
Taylor W
Actually Ron Moorhead this is his Forte
Bryan F
What a joke…there is no way that :thing” is human. The scientific community is never going to disclose or validate any non human entities, unless there is a agenda behind it. How they put totally comprimised scientific conclusions in the top geneticist peer publication and then it makes to the New York Times as a big story. There something about that creature they do not want anyone to know about.
Nick H
I tend to agree with you
Christian L
Nothing to see here…..move along citizens….swamp gas and weather balloons. And if it is/was Alien what would the story read like?? It would read just like this article. Keep the people in the dark so to speak…pay or coerce a scientist to say “the party line”. A (one) University proff has spoken underlings!! It must be true! Riiiiiiiiiight (>_^)
Arthurlynn K
No, none of the information is correct, that photo is from Dr. Steven Greer..the specimen you see on that photo is from a documentary that they have made..later, I will post more information..it is 1:35 a.m here in Hawaii..I don’t want to get out of bed to search, for the video..
Eva B
Doesn’t look human AT ALL regardless of the so called statement “underdeveloped fetus.” Uhhhh, no. Good one though!