Mystery of ‘atacama alien’ solved after genetic analysis

When a small mummified body was found in the Atacama desert in Chile back in 2003, it captured the internet's imagination.

The discovery, nicknamed 'Ata', was immediately swamped with theories speculating about its origins - with many people suggesting that it was not of this Earth.

It was the body's appearance which sparked so many theories as it resembled how many people might imagine an extra-terrestrial, according to much science-fiction at least.

There's certainly a lot about the body which sparks questions.

It was just six inches tall - so small, in fact, that some people even thought it might be a foetus.

Meanwhile, others speculated that it could be an ancient mummified body but that theory was proven wrong when multiple tests put it at around 40-years-old.

And yes, the tests have also confirmed that, despite the many theories, the body is actually human - not an alien.

The research was carried out in 2018 by Garry Nolan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford, and Atul Butte, director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco.

Bhattacharya S et al. 2018

In a press statement, Nolan said: "I had heard about this specimen through a friend of mine, and I managed to get a picture of it."

Adding: "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.'"

So what did they find?

Well, despite the extremely unusual appearance they found that this was the skeleton of a human female.

And analysis of her bones revealed that she has bone composition consistent with that of a six-year-old.

They also found that Ata is of South American descent. - having a close DNA match with other Chileans, The Guardian reported.

There was also strong evidence that she was a pre-term or stillborn birth with a form of skeletal dysplasia - which is a condition where bones have an abnormal shape or size.

Bhattacharya S et al. 2018

According to Nolan, Ata was so 'badly malformed' and probably would have been placed in a 'neonatal ICU' - however, such things were not available during that timeframe.

But what could have caused such distinctive abnormalities in Ata?

The short answer is that we don't know for sure, but Nolan offered one possible explanation.

He said: “While we can only speculate as to the cause for multiple mutations in Ata’s genome, the specimen was found in La Noria, one of the Atacama Desert’s many abandoned nitrate mining towns, which suggests a possible role for prenatal nitrate exposure leading to DNA damage.”

There you have it.