Alien mummies in Mexico? NASA's UFO study team says don't bet on it

UFOs and aliens are once again in the headlines this week.

Unfortunately, this is not because a mothership landed on the White House lawn, but because NASA released a long-awaited report published by the independent study team the agency commissioned to study unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). UAP is the new term for UFOs, encompassing not only unexplained things in the air but also in space, under water and everywhere in between.

However, the release of NASA's first UFO report wasn't the only story about possible non-human lifeforms to make headlines this week. According to Reuters, lawmakers in Mexico heard testimony this week about the presence of alien life on Earth that included two "corpses of extraterrestrials." These alleged alien corpses looked "white and like stereotypical depictions of aliens — big head, little body, three fingers," NPR reported.

The supposed alien mummies (well, the creepy ... whatever they are) were displayed by Jaime Maussan, a longtime UFO personality with a history of hoaxing alleged non-human remains. Despite Maussan's history of faking alien corpses and mummies, the story has now gone wide — so wide, in fact, that it was brought up during NASA's briefing about the new UAP report which took place on Thursday (Sept. 14). 

Related: NASA UFO report finds no evidence of 'extraterrestrial origin' for UAP sightings

During Thursday's briefing, BBC News Digital journalist Sam Cabral asked whether or not NASA has been in touch with Mexican authorities about "the rather sensational revelations" concerning the alleged alien mummies. In response, the chair of NASA's UAP study team, David Spergel, responded that if there is any evidence of alien remains, then those in possession of the material should make it publicly available for study.

"When you have unusual things, you want to make data public," Spergel said. "I think of this as like, NASA has one of the most valuable samples from outer space  —  lunar rocks  —  what do we do? We make them available to any scientists who want to work on this. 

"We don't know the nature of those samples that were shown in front of them," Spergel added. "If I was the Mexican government, if I would make a recommendation to the Mexican government — that's not our charge here, we're doing this for NASA — my recommendation [would be]: If you have something strange, make samples available to the world scientific community and we'll see what's there."

Dan Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research at NASA's Science Mission Directorate, chimed in to add that the entire point of NASA's UAP study team is to dispel the type of sensationalism and pseudoscience displayed for Mexican lawmakers this week. 

"I'll just add one of the main goals of what we're trying to do here today, is to move conjecture and conspiracy towards science and sanity," Evans said. "And you do that with data, as David says, and that's the whole purpose of this study."

As it turns out, Maussan has a history of wheeling out fake alien remains. Micah Hanks, Editor of The Debrief and a longtime UAP researcher, says that Maussan's latest alien body hoax is "unfortunately not the first time this sort of thing has happened." 

In 2015, Maussan organized an event in Mexico City marking the release of a blurry photograph depicting what appeared to be the remains of a small mummified humanoid alien. "However, once clear copies of the image were circulated online just hours after their unveiling at the event, it was quickly determined that the image actually depicted historic remains belonging to an indigenous American child which, decades ago, had been displayed for a time in a museum," Hanks told Space.com "Some of the individuals involved at the time issued public apologies on account of the child's remains being misrepresented in such a way."

It remains unclear what these most recent "alien mummies" might be, but an analysis of their physiology posted to social media suggests they have been assembled from parts of various mammals such as llamas. 

As Reuters reported, some of the other alleged alien corpses Maussan has presented over the years have turned out to be cobbled together from the remains of mummified children.