Starchild Skull
Wednesday March 19, 2008 8:29 AM
Earth or ET? Nearly 50 years after its discovery in Mexico, the origin of a strange skull is on the verge of discovery. Eight years of scientific testing — culminating in DNA tests — may soon support the belief of some researchers that the skull belongs to no human being, but perhaps to a human-ET hybrid.
That's the hope of Lloyd Pye, the investigative writer and researcher who has taken the skull on its international odyssey of testing. DNA results are expected in 2009 or 2010.
The Starchild Skull, as it is known, was discovered in 1930 in Copper Canyon, a high desert region in northern Mexico, by a teenaged American girl who went exploring in abandoned mine shafts. She reportedly found a human skeleton lying on a shaft floor, and a misshapen hand sticking out from the dirt alongside it. She dug with her hands and found a smaller, misshapen skeleton.
She hid the bones, but they were lost in rains — except for the skulls, which she smuggled home to El Paso, Texas. In the 1990s, she passed the skulls to friends, who passed them to Ray and Melanie Young, who were active in ufology. Melanie, a nurse, thought the smaller skull was not a "normal" human deformity.
In 1999, the first of many scientific tests were done on the Starchild Skull. Pye has taken the skull to experts all over the world. It was been subjected to radiographic x-rays, CAT scans, Carbon 14 dating, forensic DNA analysis and examinations by anthropologists, opthalmalogists, brain specialists and other medical professionals.
The skull is about 860-940 years old and has numerous unexplained anomalies, such as an unusually large brain volume, no front sinuses, unusual placement of the eyes, and odd dimensions.
In 2003, a DNA analysis showed that the Starchild's mitrochonrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother, was Mesoamerican. Speculation is that the larger skeleton was that of the Starchild's mother. The nuclear DNA would reveal the father. But getting the necessary material out of the bone for the testing was daunting.
In 2006, new technology allowed the Starchild's nuclear DNA to be recovered. It is undergoing sequencing, which may show beyond "reasonable doubt" whether the Starchild's father was human, or some unknown race. If ET, the skull means that at least some aliens have not resembled the "greys" depicted in the media, but have more squarish heads and smaller eyes.
Pye has chronicled the testing in his new book The Starchild Skull: Genetic Enigma or Human-Alien Hybrid. Whatever the outcome to the testing, the story of the skull leads to many intriguing questions about where humans came from, and who else might be involved in our genetic mix.
