The Controversial Study of a Girl Who Ufologists Called ‘Alien’
Before the media frenzy, before the documentary about aliens, before her bone fragments were ground up for DNA analysis, she was a girl.
She was tiny when she died. Six inches. Perhaps she was stillborn or died very young. Her body was reportedly found wrapped in cloth with a purple ribbon and buried—with intentionality, it would seem—near a church in La Noria, an abandoned town in the Atacama desert in northern Chile.
As for everything else, well, it went like this. In 2003, a local man who regularly scavenged La Noria for historical trinkets found her body. He noted the unusual conical shape of her head. Almost immediately, photos of her began to circulate, and ufologists eager for evidence of aliens came calling. A businessman bought her body and brought it to Spain. She featured prominently, as the “Atacama humanoid,” in a documentary called , which alleges, among other things, contact between aliens and ancient civilizations. On screen, the filmmakers are shown cutting her skull open, and removing a rib fragment for DNA analysis.
