"Mystery of 'alien' skeleton solved: A sample extracted from the enigmatic Atacama skeleton revealed that it was, in fact, a human female, likely a fetus, with Chilean ancestry.
This groundbreaking discovery, published in a study based on five years of genomic analysis, debunked theories of extraterrestrial origins and shed light on genetic mutation-based cases for living patients.
Ata alien skeleton was first discovered in Chile's Atacama Desert in 2003, which made headlines globally over its terrifying appearance.
Thousands of theories were posed surrounding the mysterious origin of the skeleton, and despite numerous tests, the true answer remained unknown.
Based on reports, Ata alien skeleton is only 6 inches tall with a significantly long, angular skull, slanted eye sockets, and 10 pairs of ribs, fewer than the normal 12.
Additionally, even though the Ata alien skeleton just looks like a fetus at first glance, its bones are consistent with a child aged 6 to 8 years, leaving people scratching their heads.
Although it was found in 2003, experts first analyzed Ata in 2021 and realized that the alien skeleton was only 40 years old, which was different from many theories posed before about a thousand-year-old even millions-year-old alien mummy.
The truth behind the skeleton just was unraveled in 2018 by Gary Nolan, senior author of the new study and professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, and Atul Butte, director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco.
"I had heard about this specimen through a friend of mine, and I managed to get a picture of it."
It was claimed that this was possibly the mummy of an alien.
“That was a significant claim in and of itself. More shocking though was the picture I was provided that was part of the online publicity. I decided to contact the movie directors (basically on a dare …) to tell them it was possible to do a sequencing of the specimen (if it had earthly DNA …) to determine its origin.”
"You can't look at this specimen and not think it's interesting; it's quite dramatic. So I told my friend, 'Look, whatever it is, if it's got DNA, I can do the analysis," he added.
Nolan claimed that the skeleton could have been an unrecognized primate species or human deformity; however, the team has never supposed it could be an alien.
After extracting a sample from the bone marrow of Ata's ribs to conduct a whole-genome sequence analysis. It shows that Ata's skeleton was a human female.
Although previous estimations demonstrated that her skeleton was about 6 to 8 years old, the scientists later discovered Ata may suffer from a rare bone-aging disorder that made them seem older.
Another creditable evidence indicates that Ata was a pre-term stillborn birth with a form of skeletal dysplasia which led to a condition where bones have an abnormal shape or size.
A degraded sample resulted in a mistake in the analytic process, which led to 8% of Ata's DNA not matching with human DNA.
However, they later used improver analysis and indicated the result of matching up to 98% with human DNA.
