Mystery of the Atacama Humanoid Solved


Photo: Garry Nolan

Ten years ago, a six-inch skeleton was found in a pouch in a ghost town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. It ended up in private collection and the UFO community was abuzz that we've finally found physical evidence of alien life.

When immunologist Garry Nolan of Stanford University heard about the skeleton, since named the "Atacama humanoid" or "Ata" for short, he decided to lend his scientific expertise to find out what exactly is the mysterious being:

Among the apparent abnormalities, Ata sports 10 ribs instead of the usual 12 and a severely misshapen skull. "I asked our neonatal care unit how you would go about analyzing it. Had they seen this kind of syndrome before?" Nolan says. He was directed to pediatric radiologist Ralph Lachman, co-director of the International Skeletal Dysplasia Registry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. "He literally wrote the book on pediatric bone disorders," Nolan says. Lachman was blown away, Nolan recalls: "He said, 'Wow, this is like nothing I've ever seen before.' "

To study the specimen, Nolan sought clues in Ata's genome. He initially presumed the specimen was tens or hundreds of thousands of years old—the Atacama Desert may be the driest spot on the planet, so Ata could have been preserved for eons. He consulted experts who had extracted DNA from bones of the Denisovans, an Asian relative of European Stone Age Neandertals.

Find out what the researchers concluded about the mysterious Ata, over at this post by Richard Stone of Science: Link


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It is certainly true that any living sapient being that figures out the problem with traveling the vast distances between stars in a timely manner would probably have technology and understandings that far, far, far exceed our own. They'd probably have technology that we could only dream of: Everything from the just-within-reach nanotech, to the (might as well be) mystical, barely-even-talked-about pico- and femtotech, and beyond.

They could for instance change their fundamental genetic structure to mach our own, but as I said with Tiffany, if aliens did that to themselves they would cease being alien genetically and you wouldn't have a hybrid, just another normal human child who's mother or father use to be alien. A very smart, advanced alien who, for some reason, decided to become human, but, hey, I don't judge.
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But, even if we all shared a common ancestor, unless we and the aliens have been regularly banging each other throughout the time we've been evolving as humans (not even mentioning the amount of time it takes for the materials from wherever the origin to develop into life in general), our genetic structure would drift to far away to be compatible.

It also brings us back to the problem that aliens, being alien, developed on a completely different planet then us, despite having a common origin.

Having a common ancestor doesn't automatically mean able to have a healthy child with them. True, the more recent the ancestor, the easier it is to do so, but the given the huge scale of the universe and distances between stars, any ancestor we'd have with other life in the universe would certainly not be recent. Interbreeding would certainly not be possible. Not unless one party changes their fundamental genetic structure to mach the other. But if aliens did that to themselves they would cease being alien genetically and you wouldn't have a hybrid, just another normal human child who's mother or father use to be alien. Same goes visa versa. It would still sound cool, and certainly make the headlines, but the child wouldn't be identifiable as a hybrid.
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Deram, you are certainly correct in your statement that we cannot do such things. But I will add the word YET. Our present level of technology is not yet advanced enough. But any one or thing that could travel here from another planet, no matter where that planet may be, could indeed possess such a level of technology to permit such things. I feel, IMHO, that we are the aliens we have always sought to find, and simply never knew it.
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