Controversial UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan dismissed claims made in a criminal complaint after two small, mummified specimens were unveiled to Mexican lawmakers during an event on extraterrestrial life.
Maussan, 70, a Mexican sports journalist-turned UFO enthusiast, presented the bodies in display cases earlier this week at the Mexican Congress and claimed they were not related to any life on Earth.
The congressional hearing, which was the first of its kind in Mexico, ignited curiosity in addition to condemnation by scientists.
Maussan claimed the bodies were recovered close to the ancient Nazca Lines in southern Peru and were carbon-dated by Mexico’s National Autonomous University to be about 1,000 years old.
He was also involved in the spread of the Nazca mummy story in 2017, although a 2021 paper published in the International Journal of Biology and Biomedicine that analyzed the remains and said, “the head of the small body is largely made of a deteriorated llama braincase and other unidentified bones.”
Elsa Tomasto, a Peruvian bioanthropologist, was frustrated that Maussan’s claims were given a large platform and cited several other apparent finds that were later found to be fraudulent.
He told Reuters: “What we said before still stands, they are presenting the same rehash as always and if there are people that keep believing, what can we do? It is so crass and so simple that there is nothing more to add.”
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