An informational hearing for Mexican legislators to hear presentations about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) which included a display of two purported non-human corpses did not “confirm” the existence of aliens and UFOs, as claimed in online posts.
On Sept. 12, Mexican lawmakers heard testimony at the country’s first congressional hearing on UAPs, including from UFO enthusiast and investigator Jaime Maussan, who showed two artifacts he claimed were 1,000-year-old bodies of non-human beings.
Ahead of the public hearing, Congressman Sergio Gutierrez from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s ruling party said the session would be held “to hear different perspectives” from researchers in the U.S. and other countries regarding UFOs.
However, after the hearing, a post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, said: “UFO AND ALIENS CONFIRMED BY MEXICAN GOVERNMENT! ALIEN BODIES!” alongside a video in which an unidentified speaker narrates in English while sharing clips from the hearing.
The congressional hearing was streamed live on the Mexican Congress’ YouTube channel, and it included Maussan’s presentation of two tiny figures with three fingers on each hand and elongated heads.
Jois Mantilla, journalist and researcher of Otromundo Comunicaciones, and Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican navy, joined Maussan in the presentation, as participants in the original “recovery” of the specimens near Nazca in 2017.
Referring to the specimens as “non-humans,” Maussan told the hearing that these remains were recovered in Peru near the ancient Nazca Lines topographical formations in 2017 and that the purported bodies had been analyzed by Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM).
But UNAM responded after the hearing by reissuing a previous statement that the carbon dating study via its National Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry with Accelerators (LEMA) in 2017 only determined the age of the samples, “and in no case do we make conclusions about the origin of said samples.”
Scientists have questioned Maussan’s claims about the specimens he said were found inside a tomb near Nazca, according to reports by Live Science and the San Diego Tribune. Rather than non-human remains, researchers have suggested the figures are fabricated from parts of human mummies, with some DNA tests indicating the presence of human material in the figures while other tests were inconclusive, the Tribune reported.
Maussan, speaking to Reuters on Thursday, said his critics had yet to present evidence to counter his claims.
A Peruvian official questioned how the specimens presented by Maussan had left their country of origin and told journalists on Thursday that no Peruvian scientific institution had determined the specimens to be non-human, while critics questioned the seriousness of the hearing in Mexico.
U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who had previously participated in U.S. congressional hearings about UAPs in July and testified at the Mexican legislature’s hearing called the presentation a “huge step backwards” in a post on X, saying: “I am deeply disappointed by this unsubstantiated stunt.”
VERDICT
Misleading. A hearing in the Mexican Congress did not reach any conclusions or confirm the authenticity of purported alien mummies presented by an independent investigator in a hearing on the topic of UFOs.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.
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