His name is "Ata" - short for Atacama - and no, he's not an alien, report researchers from Stanford University in the film “Sirius.” Rather, the six-inch partially-mummified specimen was male and appears to have survived for as many as six to eight years after birth, despite his small size.
Theories that the body was an aborted fetus do not hold, researchers argue, based on studies measuring its bone density and epiphyseal plate.
“Obviously, it was breathing, it was eating it was metabolizing,” Garry Nolan, the director of stem biology at the university said.
And while he admits it “calls into question how big the thing might have been when it was born,” it appears to be nothing else but an “interesting mutation.”
The findings were first located near an abandoned church in the Chilean Atacama desert, from where it derives its name. According to a Chilean local newspaper, the small figure was wrapped in a white cloth upon discovery.
UFO enthusiasts were quick to assign the specimen’s origins as extraterrestrial, especially given several of its characteristics that have come to be associated with aliens, including an oversized head. The fact that the body was scaly and dark and boasted nine ribs didn’t help.
In fact, the skeleton was considered an important element in the documentary in which extraterrestrial activist Steven Greer proposes to prove not only that aliens are real, but that the government is working very hard to cover up their existence.
Greer, a physician himself, explained that the team “obtained excellent DNA material by surgically dissecting the distal ends of two right anterior ribs” from the specimen that “clearly contained bone marrow material.”
However, not everyone is convinced the specimen is not an alien – including Greer. As far as he is concerned, the fact that they were able to prove that it was once a living organism is a step in the right direction.