Television cameras were rolling on Tuesday when Jaime Maussan, a self-described ufologist, cracked open two small caskets in the halls of the Mexican Congress, revealing two small figures he told lawmakers were “alien corpses."
The boxes were about two feet square and the figures inside them only about one foot tall. They resembled stereotypical portrayals of extraterrestrials, with long, large heads, large eyes, small bodies, and three fingers on elongated hands.
“These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution,” Maussan asserted, testifying under oath. “These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in diatom (algae) mines, and were later fossilized."
The bodies were allegedly found in a mine in Cuzco, Peru, in 2017 and are believed to be 1,000 years old, according to media reports.
Pre-Columbian indigenous societies in the Andean highlands and Pacific coast have long practiced mummification rituals on dead humans, with numerous examples known to science. Last week, a 1,000-year-old human mummy was found in a residential suburb of the Peruvian capital of Lima, who was estimated to have lived during the early Ychsma culture.
"These are not mummies," Maussan asserted on Tuesday. "These are complete bodies that have not been manipulated."
Maussan also presented what he said were X-rays of the alien bodies, showing one of them had eggs inside.
José de Jesús Zalce Benítez, a forensic expert and a military doctor, testified that the so-called 'aliens' had big brains and little eyes, “which allowed for a wide stereoscopic vision,” and that they likely only drank liquids because they did not have teeth.
Extraterrestrials supposedly visiting Earth have always captivated the interest of a certain sector of the population that believes “the truth is out there,” as one popular science fiction show put it, but in recent years unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs - the modern term for UFOs) have been given more attention by the halls of power as well.
To date, the US Congress has held several hearings on a dramatic spike in UFO sightings, which lawmakers are concerned are signs of experimental aircraft being tested by adversary nations.
In one July hearing, David Grusch, an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency who served as the national reconnaissance officer representative for the Pentagon’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force - a body tasked with researching UAP reports, claimed the US was concealing its possession of alien bodies and spacecraft. He claimed his evidence was classified and could not be revealed.
Asked earlier this month about the possibility the US government was concealing alien activities from the public, astrophysicist and science educator Neil DeGrasse Tyson said Washington wasn’t “competent” enough to keep such a secret.
"Oh, my gosh, when did you get that much confidence in the US government?” Tyson ribbed the reporter who asked him, laughing. “If we had an alien invasion, more than the US government would know about it. We would know about it.”