The mysterious story of an “extraterrestrial mummy” shocked Shelley

In 2003, a collector explored a mine in the village La Nuria, in the Atacama DesertHe found a white piece of cloth inside a leather bag. By exploring the content, he found A small mummified skeleton. At first, before his eyes, everything indicated that it could be a file Be outside the planet earth.

With Less than 15 cmAnd the 10 pairs of ribs (Two less than mortals), Orbits are very large And header ends in a conical shapeThe mysterious figure quickly drew attention, and speculation quickly spread about its origin.

Such was the interest the skeleton aroused so much that he ended up being part of a private group in Barcelona , Spain, Thousands of miles away from where it was found.

Later studies Uncover the truth behind Ata’s mysterious discoveryHe was also baptized, referring to where he was found, near the desert in northern Chile. It was not about The remains of an alien.

Published in the scientific journal Genome research In May 2018, research found that a mummified skeleton Belongs to a girl. Although due to the characteristics of the bones, the first data speculated that it could be an organism between seven or eight years old, it was concluded that it was a child He died shortly after his birth. This is special 64 mutations in your genes.

“ The amazing thing is, from the start it made us think something strange, it was The apparent maturity of the bones. The body looked more mature despite the small specimen. We think one or more transgenes were responsible. “ Gary Nolan, Professor of Microbiology at Stanford University in California.

Nolan added that the girl definitely died when she was still a newborn, and that her morphological condition would have made it impossible for her to survive. “It has been very badly formed It was impossible for him to feed. In his case, he would have ended up in the intensive care unit.

From strange suspicion to a painful story

After a friend called him to suspect he had found an object from another planet, Nolan got involved in the case in 2012, when the documentary began. Sirius, Which depicts the corpse as an alien, was still in production.

The professor contacted the documentary’s producers via email and offered to identify the DNA in the mummy. The skeleton owner approved x-rays and sampling of the ribs and right humerus.

With the samples in their possession, Nolan and his team were able to easily retrieve DNA fragments from bone marrow cells. “We knew it was a human right away“, He said Atoll Bot, A computational biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of the study.

Ralph S. LachmanAn expert in inherited bone diseases at Stanford University examined an X-ray. The specialist concluded that the symptoms of ATA set It does not match any known diseaseThis is why it is thought that he may have suffered from a mutation disorder never seen before.

Finally, scholars They were able to reconstruct a lot of the Ata genome. And so they discovered that she was a close girl Associated with the indigenous Chilean peoples, But it also showed effects of European origin.

Scientists have not dated the skeleton accurately, so they cannot say exactly when it lived. But Atta’s European heritage indicates that he was Sometime after the sixteenth centuryAfter the occupation of Chile.

After death, DNA breaks down into smaller pieces over the centuries. And as I posted New York timesDepending on the size discovered in the Ata skeleton, scientists estimated it contained it Less than 500 years old From ancient times.

But far from providing information about life on other planets, the A sad story for Atta It can shed light on current diseases. It can help solve riddles about diseases and bone images.

Source: The Nation