La Noria — the 'Atacama humanoid' (Ata)

OVERVIEW

Ata is the name given to the skeletal remains, about 15 cm long, of a premature human fetus found in 2003 near La Noria, an abandoned nitrate-mining settlement in Chile's Atacama Desert. Their small size and elongated, cone-shaped skull led to widespread but unsupported claims that they were extraterrestrial.

HISTORY

Oscar Muñoz found the remains in 2003 while exploring the ghost town: a small bundle wrapped in white cloth and tied with a purple ribbon, holding a partly mummified skeleton. They were later sold into private ownership and taken out of Chile. The 2013 documentary Sirius, produced by Steven M. Greer, presented Ata as a possible extraterrestrial; the Stanford geneticist Garry P. Nolan, asked to examine it, found in a preliminary analysis that it was human. In March 2018 Nolan and colleagues published a whole-genome study concluding that the remains were a premature human fetus with genetic variants linked to skeletal development. In September 2018 the bioarchaeologist Siân Halcrow and an international team disputed that interpretation of the genetics, while agreeing the skeleton was human. The remains have been dated to as recently as the late 1970s.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The claim that Ata was an alien spread through UFO circles and, after 2013, internationally. No credible scientific evidence has supported it. The removal of the remains from Chile and their treatment as a curiosity led anthropologists to call for repatriation and for a wider debate on research ethics with human remains.

VISITING

The remains are no longer at La Noria: they were sold into private hands and taken out of Chile.