Puzzle 'extraterrestrial creature' solved

santiago - A team of scientists has, after years of thorough research, discovered the origin of an enigmatic mummified skeleton.

The little creature, many of whom thought it was an alien, was found some fifteen years ago in the Chilean Atacama desert.

The discovery of the little creature in a deserted, dry and hot place in the Chilean desert caused a lot of unrest in 2003. People believed that Ata, as the creature was called, had to be an alien.

The mummified skeleton was only fifteen centimeters wide and had a strange, stretched skull and large eye sockets. In the first investigation it was immediately noticeable that Ata had only ten pairs of ribs, instead of twelve. Some skeletal parts also seemed to be a child between six and eight years old.

Scientists from the US state of California did intensive DNA research on the small mummy for five years. On Thursday, they were able to publish a definite conclusion about the origin of Ata in the journal Genome Research.

This shows that the tiny skeleton is indeed human. Feminine to be precise. Presumably the girl was born far too early forty years ago. She had a series of genetic abnormalities that led to, among other things, a malformation of the skull.

Could it be that, despite all malformations, she has become at least six years old, as some skeletal parts believe? No, specialists say now. Thanks to hereditary material that they extracted from a rib, they discovered that Ata was a fetus. She suffered from a rare disease that causes the bones to age quickly, writes Het Nieuwsblad.