Genetic Tests Reveal Six-Inch “Alien” Skeleton Is Actually a Human

When a diminutive skeleton — measuring just six inches long, with a tiny, cone-shaped head and only 10 pairs of ribs — was discovered behind an abandoned church in the Atacama region of Chile in 2003, onlookers thought they might have stumbled across an alien. Fifteen years later, researchers have the DNA evidence to prove that the skeleton, nicknamed Ata, is of “purely earthly origin,” a finding that was published Thursday in the journal Genome Research. Even still, plenty of questions remain unanswered. “We really haven’t see another child like that,” says Dr. Atul Butte, the director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California San Francisco and one of the researchers involved in the project. “Anything’s possible.” Bhattacharya S et al. 2018 Using DNA extracted from Ata’s bone marrow, Butte and his colleagues were able to determine that the skeleton belonged to a human female with a mix of Native American and European heritage. They also found that the skeleton was likely less than 50 years old, and probably owed its weathered appearance to the harsh climate of the Chilean desert where it was found. From there, though, things got murky. Ata’s remarkably tiny size would suggest that she was a stillborn or a fetus, but bones in the skeleton’s hands — a body part commonly analyzed to estimate age — more closely resembled that of a 6- to 8-year-old ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized DNA onetime Source Type: news