The Starchild Skull
An oddly shaped skull from a Mexican mine was promoted for years as half alien.
What was reported
The story goes that around 1930 a teenage girl found two skeletons in a mine tunnel south-west of Chihuahua city: an adult's, and a child's with an unusually broad, shallow skull. The skulls passed through several hands, and from 1999 the researcher Lloyd Pye promoted the child's as the 'Starchild', a human–alien hybrid.
Pye pointed to the skull's shape, its thin, light bone and the absence of the usual sinuses, and paid for DNA tests that he said supported his idea.
Explanations offered
Scientists who examined it concluded it belonged to a human child, probably a boy, whose skull was misshapen by hydrocephalus or a similar condition. DNA testing in 2003 found human X and Y chromosomes. Pye's later claims of unusual DNA weren't accepted by geneticists.
- When
- Found around 1930
- Where
- South-west of Chihuahua, Mexico
- Witnesses
- Found, the story goes, by a teenager in an old mine tunnel
- Status
- Explained
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