Genetic tests reveal tragic reality of Atacama 'alien' skeleton

Mummified remains from Chilean ghost town revealed to be baby girl with malformations so bizarre they led to speculation over alien life

When the mummified remains of a six-inch humanoid were found in an abandoned mining town in Chile's Atacama desert 15 years ago, speculation on its origins ran wild. The skeleton, which was sold to a private collector in Spain, was so bizarre it appeared in a documentary as potential evidence for alien life.

Now scientists in California have extracted DNA from the mummy's bones and pieced together the real and tragic story of the individual, known as Ata. Rather than a visitor from another world, Ata was a girl who appears to have been stillborn, or to have died immediately after birth, with devastating mutations that shaped her extraordinary body.