This undated image courtesy of Dr Emery Smith show a tiny, mummified skeleton discovery in 2003 in Chile’s Atacama Desert, tucked into a leather pouch behind a church. Photo: Agence France-Presse.

Genetic tests reveal incredible, tragic, true story of tiny Atacama ‘alien’ skeleton

The skeleton has some features of a well-developed child aged about eight – but is just 15cm long, with an elongated cone-shaped head and only 10 pairs of ribs

When the mummified remains of a 15cm humanoid were found in an abandoned mining town in Chile’s Atacama Desert 15 years ago, speculation on its origins ran wild. The skeleton, which was sold to a private collector in Spain, was so bizarre it appeared in a documentary as potential evidence for alien life.

Now scientists in California have extracted DNA from the mummy’s bones and pieced together the real and tragic story of the individual, known as Ata. Rather than a visitor from another world, Ata was a girl who appears to have been stillborn, or to have died immediately after birth, with devastating mutations that shaped her extraordinary body.