Teensy alien-looking skeleton from Chile poses a medical mystery

[Coyotl]

Maybe this is old news to viewers of Ancient Aliens

Teensy alien-looking skeleton from Chile poses a medical mystery
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/30/17989892-teensy-alien-looking-skeleton-from-chile-poses-a-medical-mystery

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience

A teensy skeleton with a squashed alienlike head may have earthly origins — but the remains, found in Chile's Atacama Desert a decade ago, do make for quite a medical mystery.

Apparently when the mummified specimen was discovered, some speculated that it was an alien that had somehow landed on Earth, though the researchers involved never suggested this otherworldly origin.

Now, DNA and other tests suggest that the individual was ....

[Duer 157099]

1. Oh, that's just evil

"...a human and may have been 6 to 8 years of age when he or she died. Even so, the remains were just 6 inches (15 centimeters) long."

[Coyotl]

2. Sometimes I can't help myself.

Just be happy I didn't include a photo of the Ancient Aliens guy

[Judi Lynn]

3. This is perplexing. Yikes. I can't unsee the little critter. That's going to cost someone

some sleep time, no doubt about it.

What if its loved ones come to take it back? Wouldn't want to be there.

[struggle4progress]

4. If GP Nolan at Stanford really did the DNA work, why can't I find a refereed publication?

[Lugal Zaggesi]

5. Obviously this skeleton wasn't an ancient alien

The researchers wanted to find out whether some rare disorder could explain the anomalous skeleton — for instance, it had just 10 ribs as opposed to 12 in a healthy human. They hoped to determine the age at which the organism died, as its size suggested a preterm fetus, a stillborn or a deformed child. They also thought the DNA would confirm whether it was human or perhaps a South American nonhuman primate.

The remains showed skull deformities and mild underdevelopment of the mid-face and jaw, the researchers found. The skull also showed signs of turricephaly, or high-head syndrome, a birth defect in which the top of the skull is cone-shaped.

The genome sequencing suggested that the creature was human, though 9 percent of the genes didn't match up with the reference human genome; the mismatches may be due to various factors, including degradation, artifacts from lab preparation of the specimen or insufficient data.

This was a human experimented on by ancient aliens for research and fun:

Ack ack, ACK !

[Judi Lynn]

6. That was an imperfect experiment, for sure! Ack! n/t