Tiny ‘Alien’ Skeleton Has DNA Studied But Questions Remain [Video]

A tiny “alien” skeleton first discovered in Chilé’s Atacama desert about ten years ago is back in the news with the release of Sirius, a crowdfunded UFO conspiracy film that premiered in late April.

In the film, an osteopath named Dr. Stephen Greer flew to Chilé to perform an exam and to collect DNA samples from a tiny mummified creature often described as an “alien” baby. The tiny, mostly skeletonized creature was ancient and yellowed, with a body only six inches long. You can check out Greer examining the tiny body in one of the videos included below.

Despite being found in the desert, the tiny creature appears to represent a complete skeleton with odd proportions, especially for a supposed baby. You can count nine or ten ribs instead of the normal 12 found in healthy humans.

I’m afraid that, to the cynical eye, it bears some resemblance to any number of late 19th century hoax skeletons and curiosities that can still be seen today in various Ripley’s Believe It or Not “museums.”

There was no crashed craft or any other evidence that the tiny “alien” skeleton came from outer space, but some locals were happy to entertain the Sirius filmmakers with stories that they’d observed various UFO activity in the area over the years.

Be that as it may, with the April 22 premiere of Sirius, there has been renewed interest in the DNA results from the tiny skeleton. According to Live Science, Stanford School of Medicine’s Gary Nolan said that he has only been able to “scratch the surface of the analysis.”

However, after tests that include X-ray and CT scans as well as DNA sequences, Nolan said that the being is definitely human. Based on the tiny size, it was probably either a fetus or a premature birth of a human child with severe genetic defects.

Based on mitochondrial DNA, which comes from the mother’s line, the mother was a native American from the area that would become Chilé.

Mysteries remain. The Stanford team hasn’t yet been able to figure out what caused the severe birth defects or dwarfism that the child suffered.

However, they’re reasonably confident that this particular skeleton didn’t come from our tiny ‘alien’ Space Brothers. Quite frankly, considering the decades — over a century — of hoaxes in this field, I’m just impressed that the body came from human origins at all.

Here’s the trailer for the Sirius crowdfunded documentary:

Here’s what Dr. Stephen Greer said while still awaiting the DNA results in late 2012:

What do you think about the tiny “alien” skeleton?

[photo by Angela Harburn via Shutterstock]