6-Inch Alien Skeleton Discovered in Atacama Desert: Fact Check

Story: 

The most mysterious body ever found… the Atacama Alien.

Other Versions

1. ATA, the 6-Inch Alien Discovered in the Atacama Desert.

2. Alien Skeleton Found in Atacama Desert.

Fact Check:

Various stories in circulation online since many years purport to show that a 6-Inch Mysterious Alien Skeleton was Discovered in Atacama Desert. So let us look into those claims and find out actual facts about the alleged Atacama Alien creature.

Origin of Atacama Alien Story

Back in October 2003 a local man from the Pampa, Oscar Muñoz was looking for objects of historical value in the Chilean ghost town of La Noria, which was once a boom town of the Nitrate industry. When Muñoz dug in the area around La Noria’s abandoned Church in Chile’s Atacama Desert, he discovered the Skeletal remains of a tiny creature inside a white cloth tied by a violet ribbon. The six-inch long “Atacama Humanoid,” nicknamed Ata, had hard teeth, dark, scaly skin, a bulging head with additional odd bulge on top and ten ribs instead of the usual 12 humans have.

Due to the strange features and tiny size, people described the Skeleton in Atacama Desert an Extraterrestrial being. There were also other theories saying the Atacama Humanoid could be a Monkey, an Aborted Fetus or just a complete hoax. The story and the photograph of the skeleton creature were published in Chile’s mass circulation tabloid La Cuarta on 9 October 2003 with a headline, “Discovery of a horrible dwarf extraterrestrial causes commotion in Iquique!” Since then the specimen has been traveling places. The alien stories associated with it have been doing rounds even in UFO documentaries.

Scientific Analysis Revealed Ata’s Origin

The skeleton Ata reached a symposium in Barcelona where it remained in a private collection until 2009. In the fall of 2012 Stanford scientists got an opportunity to study the mysterious Skeleton Ata through X-rays, CAT scans, and Genetic sampling. After studying a DNA sample taken from Ata the scientists concluded the creepy creature was not an Alien, but an “interesting mutation” of a Male Human, aged between six to eight years. Professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford School of Medicine, Garry Nolan said Ata’s DNA was modern, abundant and high quality, indicating the specimen is probably a few decades old. The DNA testing also revealed that Ata’s mother was an indigenous Indian from the Chilean area.

So the stories saying the Skeleton discovery of Atacama Humanoid is of an Alien or Extraterrestrial creature are hoaxes. Despite knowing Ata is Human, why it was so small remains a mystery till date. Scientists proposed many possible scenarios like Dwarfism, Progeria or even Mummification.

Hoax or Fact:

Hoax

References:

Chile’s Atacama Alien Turns Out To Be Mutated Human