Mexico’s Congress is normally meant to be a venue for solemn displays on budgets and different critical laws. However this week, lawmakers heard testimony from a self-proclaimed U.F.O. researcher who introduced with him some uncommon objects: two mummified specimens that he claimed have been the our bodies of aliens.
Actually.
The presentation of the mummies on Tuesday by Jaime Maussan, a journalist who has speculated broadly on aliens, precipitated jaws to drop and memes to multiply across the nation. The 2 specimens, which Mr. Maussan mentioned have been present in Peru in 2017, have been tiny in stature and chalky in coloration; every had three-fingered fingers and what gave the impression to be shrunken or desiccated heads.
“These are nonhuman beings who should not a part of our terrestrial evolution,” Mr. Maussan declared underneath oath, with a sign-language interpreter at his facet.
The specimens, he added, had been buried at a distant web site in Peru and have been about 1,000 years previous, based on carbon testing carried out by researchers on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico. The researchers, nonetheless, distanced themselves from Mr. Maussan’s conclusions.
Mr. Maussan lives in Mexico and is well-known for making such claims whereas dabbling within the realm of pseudoscience on tv and on YouTube, in addition to promoting his personal line of well being dietary supplements. His presentation solid consideration on the rising fascination in Mexico with the potential for extraterrestrial life, an outgrowth, some say, of efforts by American authorities to carry the veil on secrecy in authorities packages which have studied unexplained phenomena.
Mr. Maussan didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Others talking earlier than Mexico’s Congress included Ryan Graves, a former fighter pilot within the U.S. Navy who has described an in depth encounter with what seemed like a flying sphere encasing a dice. Mr. Graves, who equally testified this yr within the U.S. Congress, advised Mexican lawmakers that such encounters have been “grossly underreported.”
In an announcement after talking to Mexico’s Congress, he criticized the occasion. “My testimony centered on sharing my expertise,” he said on X, previously Twitter. He added: “However I’m deeply disillusioned by this unsubstantiated stunt.”
Mr. Maussan was invited by a lawmaker, Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, who mentioned he was enthusiastic about listening to completely different views on a subject of vast curiosity.
“What we did right here was an train in listening,” Mr. Luna, who belongs to the governing Morena occasion, told reporters after the presentation. “Studying about topics, no matter they might be, is finished by discovering contrasting opinions.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Maussan’s presentation surprised many in scientific circles in Mexico. After pictures of the mummies started circulating, the Institute of Physics on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico launched a statement making it clear that its researchers had by no means examined the specimens themselves however had merely finished carbon testing in 2017 on pores and skin samples offered by a shopper.
The college lab which did the testing “disassociates itself from any use, interpretation, or subsequent misrepresentation of the outcomes it supplies,” the institute mentioned. “In no case can we draw conclusions concerning the origin of those samples.”
Equally, Antígona Segura, one in every of Mexico’s high astrobiologists, questioned Mr. Maussan’s contentions. “These conclusions are merely not backed up by proof,” mentioned Dr. Segura, who collaborates with the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, a NASA initiative to seek for life on distant worlds. “The entire thing could be very shameful.”
It was unclear how Mr. Maussan received the mummified specimens to Mexico from Peru, whether or not they’re truly from Peru, or if his specimens are reproductions or completely different from different mummified stays beforehand mentioned to be extraterrestrial, that are nonetheless in Peru.
However Peruvian information stories have suggested that Mr. Maussan received wind of some mummies in 2017 from a Peruvian tomb raider. Evaluation of the specimens in query in Peru confirmed that they have been manufactured utilizing a mixture of human and animal bones, vegetable fibers and artificial adhesives.
One other analysis in 2021 decided that the top of one of many specimens was a deteriorated llama braincase. Whereas debunking the rivalry that the mummies have been extraterrestrials, the researchers expressed surprise as to how the specimens have been made centuries in the past, showing to be “constructions of very top quality.”
Elda Cantú and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.