believers in extraterrestrial life were over the moon when mexico's congress invited them to speak at a hearing entitled the "public assembly for the regulation of unidentified anomalous aerial phenomena (uap)." if the term "uap" seems a little unfamiliar, it's an abbreviation that's gradually replacing the older term "ufo's" (or unidentified flying objects).
at the september 2023 hearing, controversial ufo crusader jaime maussan announced that dna testing carried out by several laboratories had confirmed the incredible—the remains of bodies unearthed near nazca, peru, were those of 1,000-year-old aliens.
the powerpoint presentation behind maussan displayed the logos of facilities that had analyzed the purported alien samples, and one of them was 阿根廷vs墨西哥竞猜 's paleo-dna laboratory.
had the paleo-dna lab proven that aliens have walked among us?
brain matter and bone/tissue samples sent to the paleo-dna lab for analysis.
invasion of the body snatchers
the story of the alien corpses began when mummified bodies and skulls, as well as organs such as hearts, were discovered at an underground archaeological site near nazca in 2017.
this led a company connected with the discovery to contact the paleo-dna lab about assessing one of the bodies, which they described as a non-human biological entity (for confidentiality reasons, the paleo-dna lab can't release the company's name). their decision to reach out to the paleo-dna lab was likely based on the lab's international reputation in the field of ancient and degraded dna. some of its celebrated cases include identifying the titanic's unknown child and a crew member of the doomed 19th-century franklin expedition in the high arctic. their work has also helped crack notorious unsolved murders.
when the client in possession of the nazca corpses got in touch with the paleo-dna lab, they told lab technical manager stephen fratpietro that the remains had already been examined by archaeologists, biologists, anthropologists, doctors, and anatomists and that none of them had been able to determine if they were human.
"when someone approaches us about something they think might be alien," fratpietro explains, "i tell them that we analyze samples as if they're human or animal. if something is a bit odd, we would note that. so far, we've never worked on a sample that hasn't been identified as human or animal."
stephen fratpietro (bsc'97/hbsc'98/msc'01/bed'01) is also a lakehead alum with several degrees.
to conduct the analysis, the paleo-dna lab was given a bone fragment and brain matter that fratpietro says looked like chunky dirt. in addition, they were sent a photo of a body and a photo of two elongated skulls with enormous eye sockets—but not the actual bodies or skulls.
"the body in the photo had a tiny rib cage with elongated arms and an exceptionally long three-fingered hand—it looked like the typical alien you see in older sci-fi movies. there was also a bit of dried skin on the body resembling something you'd find on crocodiles. the photos were among the weirdest things i've ever seen, and this is one of the strangest cases we've ever been involved in."
for both the brain and bone samples, the lab took a small amount of each specimen, crushed them up, and put them in a solution that chemically broke them down into their biological components and then isolated the dna from the rest of the solution. once this was done, they performed a polymerase chain reaction (pcr) to copy specific areas of the dna and generate a dna sequence. the resulting sequence was compared to a dna database.
"we used a universal identification test and compared the results to a database that gives you a percentage result," fratpietro says. "both samples gave us a 99-100% match to homo sapiens, which means that it was identified as human and not out of the ordinary. if the percentage was only 80% or 90% human, it would have been something else."
they also ran a sex identification analysis and found that the samples were male.
the truth is out there
in its examination, the paleo-dna lab discovered something else significant—both samples were very damaged and may have been contaminated with modern dna, probably while they were being excavated, stored, or shipped.
"handling samples can definitely contaminate them," fratpietro says. "when we get bone samples, we try to remove surface contamination, however, we can't always do this completely and we can't decontaminate brain samples."
there is a second possible reason for the contaminated dna. "the samples could have been a hoax," fratpietro says. in fact, maussan and his followers have previously been accused of combining human and animal bones to construct creatures they claim are alien or supernatural, such as the "demon fairy" they brought to the public's attention in 2016.
after the paleo-dna lab submitted their results to their client in 2017, they heard nothing about the nazca case until it went public at the uap meeting in 2023.
"i was surprised that they referenced our lab at the conference because our results showed that it was human dna," fratpietro says.
the scientific community has expressed frustration at maussan's insistence that the remains are alien and pointed out that the bodies are almost certainly mummies from the nazca civilization—a pre-columbian culture that flourished between c. 100 bc and 650 ad. the nazca people were responsible for creating massive drawings, called the nazca lines, of animals and geometric designs that they etched into the ground of the arid desert. they also mummified people after their deaths and wrapped their bodies in cloth. moreover, one of the characteristics of the remains that maussan and others cite as proof of alien life—the shape of the skulls—can be explained by the nazca's practice of bandaging children's heads to give them an elongated shape.
the mexican congress hearing has caused fallout because of a perceived lack of respect in the handling of the bodies and the dig site. according to the alpha biolabs laboratory, the peruvian world congress on mummy studies has called for an official inquiry into whether archaeological crimes were committed.
although the paleo-dna lab didn't find proof of extraterrestrial life, fratpietro says he's seen a lot of things in the sky that he couldn't explain. but does that mean that he believes in aliens?
"anything is possible," he responds. "i like to keep an open mind."