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The Starchild skull is an abnormal human skull allegedly found in Mexico. It is primarily notable due to claims by paranormal researchers that it is the product of extraterrestrial-human breeding. Mitochondrial DNA recovered from the skull establishes it as human.
Discovery
The starchild skull came into the possession of Ray and Melanie Young of El Paso, Texas, who entrusted it to Lloyd Pye in February 1999. Pye is a writer and lecturer in what he describes as the field of alternative knowledge. According to Pye, 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.
Analysis
The skull is abnormal in several respects. A dentist determined, based on examination of the upper right maxilla found with the skull, that it was a child's skull, 4.5 to 5 years in age. However, the volume 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 at the bottom of the orbit instead of at the back. There are no frontal sinuses. The back of the skull is flattened. The skull consists of calcium hydroxyapatite, the normal material of mammalian bone.
Dating
Carbon 14 dating was performed twice, the first on the normal human skull at the University of California at Riverside in 1999, and on the Starchild skull in 2004 at Beta Analytic in Miami, the largest radiocarbon dating laboratory in the world. Both tests provided results of 900 years ± 40 years since death.
DNA testing
DNA testing in 1999 at BOLD, a forensic DNA lab in Vancouver, British Columbia found standard X and Y chromosomes in two samples taken from the skull, "conclusive evidence that the child was not only human (and male), but both of his parents must have been human as well, for each must have contributed one of the human sex chromosomes". Further DNA testing at Trace Genetics, which specializes in extracting DNA from ancient samples, in 2003 recovered mitochondrial DNA from both 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. The adult female belongs 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. Trace Genetics obtained nuclear DNA, which contains chromosomes from both the father and the mother, from the adult female, but was not able to recover useful lengths of nuclear DNA or Y-chromosomal DNA of the father from the Starchild skull, despite conducting six consecutive tests.
Explanations
Potential explanations for the skull's unusual features, apart from the alien-hybrid hypothesis, include the use of cradle boarding on a hydrocephalic child, brachycephaly and Crouzon syndrome.
Early in 2010 the head of a large genetics lab in the U.S. contacted the Starchild Project to say he was willing to attempt to recover the Starchild Skull's nuclear DNA, which could not be recovered in 2003 by Trace Genetics. Trace Genetics had to use what was available then: long human-only primers made from many thousands of base pairs strung together. The new geneticist explained that he could use a modified "shotgun" technique to recover much shorter strings of as little as 200 to 500 base pairs long. Where primers are like a single bullet, the new technique is like a spray of shotgun pellets, giving a much better chance to hit a result. The geneticist was certain that if the skull’s nuclear DNA was still viable, then, human or not, he could recover it.
A sample of the Starchild Skull’s bone was provided, and in a few weeks the geneticist reported incredible results. Not only had he recovered substantial amounts of nuclear DNA, he had also made a historic discovery when he attempted to catalogue his results. The gel sheet below shows an unmistakable recovery of its nuclear DNA, showing more than a half-dozen strings between 1000 and 2000 base pairs long.
Gel sheet showing the recovery of the Starchild Skull's Nuclear DNA
Whenever geneticists want to have an unknown sequence of DNA analyzed, they send it for analysis to the enormous genetic database located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland. That public-access database is a centralized repository of all the genomic data accumulated by U.S. government funded research, and it now covers every phylum on Earth, from various kinds of viruses and bacteria, to various kinds of crustaceans and fish, to all kinds of animals and plants, including primates and humans.
Our geneticist sent several samples of the Starchild’s nuclear DNA to be compared with trillions of recorded sequences at the NIH. Below we see a report summary returned by the NIH Basic Logical Alignment Search Tool (BLAST).
BLAST report on one 265 base pair segment of the Starchild Skull's Nuclear DNA
In this report we see that one length of 265 base pairs from the Starchild Skull’s nuclear DNA matches perfectly with a part of a gene on human chromosome #1. This verifies that some of the nuclear DNA from the Starchild is from a human being.
In the next screen shot (below) a string of 342 base pairs recovered from the Starchild Skull was analyzed. This time the result reads: "No significant similarity found. For reasons why, click here.” Those “reasons why” are an automatically generated list of possible procedural errors designed to help geneticists check all possible flaws in their testing techniques. Our geneticist has verified his procedures and replicated his results, indicating that no such mistakes were made.
BLAST report on a 342 base pair segment of the Starchild Skull's Nuclear DNA
To have recovered a string of base pairs 342 nucleotides long with NO reference in the NIH database is astounding because it means there is NO known earthly corollary for what has been analyzed!
Please understand that these results have now been repeated and verified several times. Strings of Starchild DNA over 3000 base pairs long have failed to match with anything in the NIH database. Despite that, skeptics will be obligated by their positions to try to say it is some kind of genetic gibberish or a mistake made during the analysis process. Why? Because, in the words of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “Every truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Luckily, any protest can easily be overcome with continued repetition and reproduction of results, isolating more and more unique fragments to add to the library of data already being created from Starchild DNA.
Our geneticist is confident that complete confirmation will unfold over the following months as the Starchild Skull’s entire genome is recovered using advanced sequencing technology. Ultimately, he will be able to formally announce that he has absolute, ironclad proof that a significant part of the Starchild's genome cannot be found on Earth.
References
- Pye, Lloyd 'Starchild Project'
- Pye, Lloyd. "TERRIBLE TWO'S : Summary of the first Two Years". Starchild Project. Archived from the original on 2008-01-18. Retrieved 2009-08-26.
- ^ McCoy, Max (November 1999). "Star Child". Fortean Times (127): 42–45.
- Brown, Matthew. "A Report on Maxilla and Dental X-Rays". Starchild Project. Archived from the original on 2008-01-29. Retrieved 2009-08-26.
- Robinson, Ted J. "A Preliminary Analysis of a Highly Unusual Human-Like Skull". Starchild Project. Archived from the original on 2008-01-27. Retrieved 2009-08-26.
- (Pye, L. 2007, pp. 206-7 and p. 218)
- http://www.theness.com/index.php/the-starchild-project/
- Trace Genetics "Report on the DNA analysis from skeletal remains from two skulls"
- Phoenix, Jack (Early 2005 (special)). "Unconvention 2004". Fortean Times (191): 28–30.
{{cite journal}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - Chow, Adelina (2006). "The Mystery of the Starchild Skull". World-Mysteries.com. Retrieved 2006-10-01.
