Ancient traces of ET?

"Starchild:"

If aliens exist and do visit Earth, they have probably visited it in the past also, and traces must be found. Indeed, several evidences do exist. Their true nature is sometimes not investigated at all, sometimes under debate. One thing is sure: There are sufficient clues to investigate before to claim that there is no such traces for certain.

Last minute:

Genetic analysis has finally been made thanks to the funding gathered by Lloyd Pye. The analysis have revealed that this cranium is entirely human as for its genes.

The case:

60 to 70 years ago a 15 to 18 years old girl was visiting relatives in a village 100 miles of Chihuahua, Mexico. She was forbidden to enter the area's numerous caves but like most teenagers, she did, and found a complete human skeleton lying on the ground of a minue tunnel. Sticking up out of the ground, was also a malformed skeletal hand entwined in one of the human skeleton's upper arms. The girl scraped the dirt off a shallow grave and a smaller and malformed buried skeleton revealed. The girl recovered both skulls and kept them until her last days when she gave to an American man, who had them for five years before passing them to an American couple who still owns them.

The pictures:

Three views of the "Starchild" skull. Click on the pictures to get them in a larger format.

The skull's degree of humanity is questionnable as several aspects of its morphology defy categorizing as genetic defect (inherited), congenital deformation (birth defect), or inflicted deformity (cranial binding):

The average volume for a human brain is 1400 cc. The volume of the human skull is 1200 cc, typical for a small human. In contrast, the volume of the anomalous skull is 1600 cc, in anthropological metrics it means the anomalous skull does not belong to homo sapiens.
Squeezing skulls is sometime a practice in certain cultures, it leaves the bones separated at the top of the skull. This is not the case with this anomalous skull.
Average human skull weighs 2.2 pounds. Including the anomalous skull's detached pieces, it weighs only 13.5 ounces. Because it is roughly the size of the adult skull, its bone has to be significantly lighter than typical human bone.
The anomalous skull has a high degree of symmetry. Cranial pathologies will cause differences in degree on either side of the head, along with other distortions. Thus, it is highly unlikely a cranium so clearly aberrant would exhibit such startling symmetry throughout.
No sutures between the bones have sealed themselves off from further growth. Nearly all examples of congenital deformity exhibit some degree of premature sealing of cranial sutures. This makes it highly unlikely, if not virtually impossible, for the child's skull to be the result of deformity. It seems to have grown naturally into the shape is had taken.
Normal human eye sockets have a recessed (5 cm) conical shape with optic nerves and optic fissures at the inner rear quadrant of the cone. The child's eye sockets have a shallow (3 cm) scalloped shape with optic nerves and optic fissures moved down and away to the inner bottom. Also, the inner surface of both sockets have incredibly subtle terrain shifts that are impossible to explain in any way other than genetic design. The shape and width of the eye orbits are different from normal humans, they are shaped like a lopsided oval with a clearly definable edge.
The spot where the vertebral column connects with the head is not similar to human skulls but consistent with the particular gravity center of the skull. The configuration allows the neck to be 1/2 to 1/3 that of a normal human, consistent with alleged descriptions of certain thin-necked aliens beings.

DNA investigation:

A non-profit organisation called StarChild project tries to conduct a DNA anaylsis. This is how far they are at this point:

"Nothing is likely to be definitive about the origin of the child's skull until its nuclear DNA can be tested. Because the skull is considered technically "ancient" (over 50 years of age), recovering nuclear DNA will be difficult and costly. Luckily, we have what is most required for such a test, which is teeth. The pulp in teeth resists deterioration better than any other part of the body, so that is where we must look for nuclear DNA.

Worldwide there are only a handful of laboratories capable of sequencing ancient nuclear DNA, and all such processes are time-consuming, highly technical, and very expensive. Thus, we cannot contract to have this testing done until funding is available to pay for it, but we will announce all such results as soon as they are available."

As of 2001, I wrote:

"At this time, it has been found that the skull is over 900 years old, its DNA is very degraded, it seems to be male and at least testable parts of the DNA are human."

"The "Starchild Project" did not raise suficient funding to continue the investigation at this time. Please remember that the DNA of a human and of a chimpanzee are 99% identical."

Update of June 2003:

Genetic analysis has finally been made thanks to the funding gathered by Lloyd Pye. The analysis revealed that this cranium is entirely human as for its genes.

The comparison:

I did these superpositions in 2001:

Three views of the "Starchild" skull...
...compared to the very typical human skull found near it.
Superpositions.

This page was last updated on June 20, 2003