A close encounter with the 'alien bodies' in Mexico | The Business Standard
Skip to main content
  • Latest
  • Economy
    • Banking
    • Stocks
    • Industry
    • Analysis
    • Bazaar
    • RMG
    • Corporates
    • Aviation
  • Videos
    • TBS Today
    • TBS Stories
    • TBS World
    • News of the day
    • TBS Programs
    • Podcast
    • Editor's Pick
  • World+Biz
  • Features
    • Panorama
    • The Big Picture
    • Pursuit
    • Habitat
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Mode
    • Tech
    • Explorer
    • Brands
    • In Focus
    • Book Review
    • Earth
    • Food
    • Luxury
    • Wheels
  • Subscribe
    • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Sports
    • TBS Graduates
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • Gallery
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Magazine
    • Climate Change
    • Health
    • Cartoons
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Thursday
July 10, 2025

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Latest
  • Economy
    • Banking
    • Stocks
    • Industry
    • Analysis
    • Bazaar
    • RMG
    • Corporates
    • Aviation
  • Videos
    • TBS Today
    • TBS Stories
    • TBS World
    • News of the day
    • TBS Programs
    • Podcast
    • Editor's Pick
  • World+Biz
  • Features
    • Panorama
    • The Big Picture
    • Pursuit
    • Habitat
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Mode
    • Tech
    • Explorer
    • Brands
    • In Focus
    • Book Review
    • Earth
    • Food
    • Luxury
    • Wheels
  • Subscribe
    • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Sports
    • TBS Graduates
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • Gallery
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Magazine
    • Climate Change
    • Health
    • Cartoons
  • বাংলা
THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025
A close encounter with the 'alien bodies' in Mexico

Science

Reuters
16 September, 2023, 03:20 pm
Last modified: 16 September, 2023, 04:40 pm

Related News

  • El Chapo's former lawyer and an ex-drug smuggler are on the ballot to be judges in Mexico
  • Trump confirms he offered to send US troops to Mexico to help with cartels
  • Sheinbaum says she rejected Trump's offer to send troops to Mexico
  • UNESCO sees Bangladesh not just as member, but partner with real promise: Gabriela Ramos Patina 
  • Keen to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Bangladesh: Mexican president

A close encounter with the 'alien bodies' in Mexico

Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao, a respected Peruvian bio-anthropologist, is frustrated such claims are still being given publicity, citing similar alleged finds that were found to be frauds

Reuters
16 September, 2023, 03:20 pm
Last modified: 16 September, 2023, 04:40 pm
Remains of an allegedly 'non-human' being is seen on display during a briefing on unidentified flying objects, known as UFOs, at the San Lazaro legislative palace, in Mexico City, Mexico September 12, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero
Remains of an allegedly 'non-human' being is seen on display during a briefing on unidentified flying objects, known as UFOs, at the San Lazaro legislative palace, in Mexico City, Mexico September 12, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero

For Jaime Maussan, a Mexican journalist and longtime UFO enthusiast, they are one of the most important discoveries in the history of humankind.

But for many scientists these two tiny mummified bodies with elongated heads and three fingers on each hand, images of which were beamed around the world this week when they were presented to Mexico's Congress, are an already-debunked - perhaps criminal - stunt.

At Maussan's office, in the Mexico City business district of Santa Fe, staff members carefully carry the two closed boxes with glass lids containing the bodies into a green-screened studio, where Reuters had exclusive access on Friday.

The Business Standard Google News Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel

Everyone huddles around to get a better look. The bodies appear ancient and share characteristics with humans: two eyes, a mouth, two arms, two legs. Maussan claims they were found around 2017 in Peru, near the pre-Columbian Nazca Lines.

He says he can prove they are unlike anything known on Earth. On social media and in the hearing, he shared scientific analysis and study results he argues proves the bodies are about 1,000 years old and not related to any known Earthly species.

One of them, described by Maussan as a female, was discovered to have eggs inside, he said.

"It is the most important thing that has happened to humanity," Maussan, 70, said of his crusade to bring awareness to the findings, sitting in his office that is heavily decorated with colorful alien-themed artwork and paraphernalia.

"I believe that this phenomenon is the only one that gives us the opportunity to unite," he added.

Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao, a respected Peruvian bio-anthropologist, is frustrated such claims are still being given publicity, citing similar alleged finds that were found to be frauds.

"What we said before still stands, they are presenting the same rehash as always and if there are people that keep believing that, what can we do?," she said by phone. "It is so crass and so simple that there is nothing more to add."

Previous such finds have been dismissed by the scientific community as mutilated mummies of pre-Hispanic children, sometimes combined with bits of animal parts.

David Spergel, former head of Princeton University's astrophysics department and chair of a NASA report into unidentified anomalous phenomena, said on Thursday that such samples should be made available for testing by the world's scientific community.

TESTING CONUNDRUM

Maussan shared on social media and in his presentation the results of DNA and carbon dating tests that he said he commissioned on "the beings."

A Mexican scientist, at the request of Reuters, reviewed the results and concluded they indicated normal life on Earth.

Maussan told Reuters on Friday that the test results were not directly related to the two bodies that he showed Congress this week, however. In fact, he said, they were conducted on an entirely different body, known as Victoria, that remains in Peru.

"They were found in the same place. They have the same physical appearance, they are the same," Maussan said of Victoria and the two bodies he presented in Mexico. Testing was not done on those two bodies in order to avoid damaging them, he said.

Maussan is no stranger to controversy. He has made claims about other remains in the past that have been widely criticized. He participated in a 2017 TV documentary about other remains found near the Nazca Lines, which experts like Tomasto-Cagigao and paleontologist Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi have said appeared to feature doctored mummies.

Now, he has angered Peruvian officials.

Peruvian Culture Minister Leslie Urteaga has questioned how the specimens, which she said were pre-Hispanic objects, left Peru and says a criminal complaint has been filed.

"I'm not worried. I have done absolutely nothing illegal," Maussan said.

How the bodies arrived in Mexico is a question he says he cannot answer. Borrowed by Maussan for the hearing, they are in the possession of a Mexican man, who was in Maussan's office on Friday and who declined to be identified.

When asked how the bodies - whom he called Clara and Mauricio - came to be in his possession, the man replied only that he would reveal all "at the appropriate time."

Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, Director of the Health Sciences Research Institute of the Secretary of the Navy, participated in the congressional hearing, bolstering Maussan's claims. Now joining him at his office, he calmly explained his interpretation of the science.

"Based on the DNA tests, which were compared with more than one million species ... they are not related to what is known or described up to this moment by science or by human knowledge," he said.

Julieta Fierro, the scientist at Mexico's National Autonomous University's (UNAM) Institute of Astronomy who reviewed Maussan's test results for Reuters, sees far less mystery in the data.

She said that the presence of carbon-14 in studies done by UNAM proves that the samples were related to brain and skin tissues from different mummies who died at different times.

The proportion of the radioactive carbon-14 isotope that is absorbed by living organisms into their tissue decays over time, which allows scientists to determine the approximate year of death of the specimen.

On other planets, the amount of carbon-14 in their atmospheres would not necessarily be the same as on Earth, she said.

All in all, the results "do not show anything mysterious that could indicate life compounds that do not exist on Earth," Fierro said.

Top News / World+Biz

Mexico / Aliens

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Representational image. Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain/TBS
    Explainer: Why SSC pass rate hit a 17-year low
  • Council of Advisers' meeting on Thursday (10 July). Photo: CA Press Wing
    Govt cancels 'Sir' address directive from Hasina's rule
  • Sri Lanka cruise to seven-wicket win over Bangladesh in first T20I
    Sri Lanka cruise to seven-wicket win over Bangladesh in first T20I

MOST VIEWED

  • Graphics: TBS
    BB raises startup fund limit, drops upper age barrier
  • Workers pack undergarments at the packing section of a garment factory in Ashulia, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Fatima Tuj Johora
    After US tariffs, jobs hang by a thread in Bangladesh's garments sector
  • Photo: Mohammad Minhaj Uddin/TBS
    SSC, equivalent results: Pass rate drops to 68.45%, GPA-5 also declines
  • File photo of containers at Chattogram port/TBS
    US buyers push Bangladeshi exporters to share extra tariff costs
  • Govt vehicle purchase, foreign trip, new building construction banned: Finance ministry
    Govt vehicle purchase, foreign trip, new building construction banned: Finance ministry
  • Students sit for SSC exam at Motijheel Girls' High School on 10 April 2025. Photo: Mehedi Hasan/TBS
    SSC exam results out: Here's how you can check online and via SMS

Related News

  • El Chapo's former lawyer and an ex-drug smuggler are on the ballot to be judges in Mexico
  • Trump confirms he offered to send US troops to Mexico to help with cartels
  • Sheinbaum says she rejected Trump's offer to send troops to Mexico
  • UNESCO sees Bangladesh not just as member, but partner with real promise: Gabriela Ramos Patina 
  • Keen to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Bangladesh: Mexican president

Features

Photo: Collected/BBC

What Hitler’s tariff policy misfire can teach the modern world

2h | The Big Picture
Illustration: TBS

Behind closed doors: Why women in Bangladesh stay in abusive marriages

5h | Panorama
Purbachl’s 144-acre Sal forest is an essential part of the area’s biodiversity. Within it, 128 species of plants and 74 species of animals — many of them endangered- have been identified. Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain/TBS

A forest saved: Inside the restoration of Purbachal's last Sal grove

5h | Panorama
Women are forced to fish in saline waters every day, risking their health to provide for their families. Photo: TBS

How Mongla’s women are bearing the brunt of rising salinity

1d | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

'Hypocrisy' will not continue, Iran tells IAEA

'Hypocrisy' will not continue, Iran tells IAEA

1h | TBS World
OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome

OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome

53m | TBS World
Will the title 'Honorable and Excellency' be abolished?

Will the title 'Honorable and Excellency' be abolished?

1h | TBS Today
July Declaration must be constitutionally recognized: Akhtar Hossain

July Declaration must be constitutionally recognized: Akhtar Hossain

1h | TBS Today
EMAIL US
contact@tbsnews.net
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Advertisement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2025
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - oped.tbs@gmail.com

For advertisement- sales@tbsnews.net