Mexican Congress holds hearing on UFOs featuring purported 'alien' bodies
NASA is set to discuss findings from the study on Thursday.
MEXICO CITY, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Mexican lawmakers heard testimony that "we are not alone" in the universe and saw the alleged remains of non-human beings in an extraordinary hearing marking the Latin American country's first congressional event on UFOs.
In the hearing on Tuesday on FANI, the Spanish acronym for what are usually now termed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), politicians were shown two artifacts that Mexican journalist and long-time UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials.
The specimens were not related to any life on Earth, Maussan said.
The two tiny "bodies," displayed in cases, have three fingers on each hand and elongated heads. Maussan said they were recovered in Peru near the ancient Nazca Lines in 2017. He said that they were about 1,000 years old, analyzed through a carbon dating process by Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM).
Similar such finds in the past have turned out to be the remains of mummified children.
Maussan said it was the first time such evidence had been presented.
"I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that all possibilities are open for any scientific institution... to investigate it," Maussan said.
"We are not alone," he added.
Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, Director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican navy, said X-rays, 3-D reconstruction and DNA analysis had been carried out on the remains.
"I can affirm that these bodies have no relation to human beings," he said.
UNAM on Thursday republished a statement first issued in 2017, saying the work by its National Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry with Accelerators (LEMA) was only intended to determine the age of the samples.
"In no case do we make conclusions about the origin of said samples," the statement said.
Lawmakers also heard from former U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who has participated in U.S. Congressional hearings about his personal experience with UAP and the stigma around reporting such sightings.
Congressman Sergio Gutierrez, from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's ruling Morena party, said he hoped the hearing would be the first of other similar events in Mexico.
"We are left with reflections, with concerns and with the path to continue talking about this," Gutierrez said.
In recent years, the U.S. government has done an about-face on public information on UAP after decades of stonewalling and deflecting. The Pentagon has been actively investigating reported sightings in recent years by military aviators, while an independent NASA panel studying UFOs is the first of its kind by the space agency.
NASA is set to discuss findings from the study on Thursday.
Maussan faced swift backlash and criticism from skeptics on Wednesday who questioned the authenticity of his presentation.
"This could really hurt efforts to take the issue seriously," said a user of X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter. "Why didn't they wait until a scientific paper was ready to publish it?"
