A six-inch long skeleton with a small, elongated head that was found in a desert in Chile 10 years ago is actually a human male.
A report on UPI.com says DNA and other tests show the skeletal remains are of a boy who lived to 6 to 8 years of age.
The skeleton was found mummified in the Atacama Desert in Chile in 2003. At the time, some people thought it could be extraterrestrial while others thought it could be an aborted fetus or a primate.
It’s called the “Atacama humanoid.”
Researcher Gary Nolan at the Stanford School of Medicine told Live Science that DNA from the remains show “the mother being an indigenous woman from the Chilean area of South America.”
The tiny skeleton definitely poses a medical mystery for researchers who are trying to learn what mutations were at work to cause the deformity.
They have been unable to determine how old the bones are to this point in time. But they estimate the tiny person lived a few decades ago.
The research was featured in the film “Sirius,” a UFO documentary that premiered April 22.
