Starchild skull

The Starchild skull

The Starchild skull is part of a malformed human skull which paranormalist Lloyd Pye has claimed is of extraterrestrial origin, likely to have been that of a child who died as a result of congenital hydrocephalus.

Claims of Lloyd Pye

Pye claimed to have obtained the skull from Ray and Melanie Young of El Paso, Texas, in February 1999, stating that the skull was found around 1930 in a mine tunnel about 100 miles (160 km) southwest of Chihuahua, Mexico, buried alongside a normal human skeleton that was exposed and lying supine on the surface of the tunnel.[1][2]

Pye claimed the skull to be a hybrid offspring of an extraterrestrial and a human female.[3][4]

Assessment of the evidence

Young children with hydrocephalus typically have an abnormally large head, as fluid pressure causes individual skull bones to bulge outward.

A dentist who examined the upper right maxilla found with the skull determined that the skull was that of a child aged 4.5 to 5 years. The volume, however, of the interior of the starchild skull is 1,600 cubic centimeters, which is 200 cm³ larger than the average adult's brain, and 400 cm³ larger than an adult of the same approximate size. The orbits are oval and shallow, with the optic nerve canal situated closer to the bottom of the orbit than to the back. There are no frontal sinuses.[1] The back of the skull is flattened. The skull consists of calcium hydroxyapatite, the normal material of mammalian bone.

Neurologist Steven Novella of Yale University Medical School says that the cranium exhibits all of the characteristics of a child who has died as a result of congenital hydrocephalus, and the cranial deformations were the result of accumulations of cerebrospinal fluid within the skull.[4][5][6][7]

DNA testing in 1999 at BOLD (Bureau of Legal Dentistry), a forensic DNA lab in Vancouver, British Columbia, found standard X and Y chromosomes in two samples taken from the skull. Novella considers this "conclusive evidence" that the child was both male and human, and that both of his parents must have been human in order for each to have contributed one of the human sex chromosomes.[5]

Further DNA testing in 2003 at Trace Genetics, which specializes in extracting DNA from ancient samples, isolated mitochondrial DNA from both recovered skulls. The child belongs to haplogroup C. Since mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the mother, it makes it possible to trace the offspring's maternal lineage. The DNA test therefore confirmed that the child's mother was a Haplogroup C human female. However, the adult female found with the child belonged to haplogroup A. Both haplotypes are characteristic Native American haplogroups, but the different haplogroup for each skull indicates that the adult female was not the child's mother.[3][4]

References

  1. 1 2 McCoy, Max (November 1999). "Star Child". Fortean Times (127): 42–45.
  2. ↑ "Alien skull' star attraction at Leeds extra-terrestrial conference". Yorkshire Evening Post. 27 June 2009. Retrieved 13 August 2011.
  3. 1 2 Brian Regal (15 October 2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia: A Critical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 88–. ISBN 978-0-313-35508-0.
  4. 1 2 3 Feder, Kenneth L. (2010). Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum. ABC-CLIO. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
  5. 1 2 Novella, Steven. "The Starchild Project". The New England Skeptical Society. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
  6. ↑ Roberts, Alice (2015). The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us. Quercus. pp. 87–88.
  7. ↑ Feder, Kenneth L. (2010). Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum. ABC-CLIO.
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