RESEARCHERS have verified the legitimacy of a set of three-fingered mummies as potential evidence of "non-human" life forms.
A line-up of doctors confirmed at Mexico's Congress on Tuesday that the bodies, purportedly not of this Earth, were in fact real, once-living organisms.
The small-bodied figures were described as being a "new species" of "non-human being", as they were without lungs or ribs.
Anthropologist Roger Zuniga of Ica Peru's San Luis Gonzaga National University revealed researchers had come across five similar specimens over four years.
He told Reuters: "They're real.
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"There was absolutely no human intervention in the physical and biological formation of these beings."
A letter signed by 11 researchers from Zuniga's university declared all were in agreeance the bodies were real, but refused to certify they were "extraterrestrial".
Journalist and UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan first brought the odd-looking "alien corpses" with three-fingered hands and elongated skulls to the attention of lawmakers in September.
He and others claimed at Mexico's first-ever congressional hearing on UFOs that the bodies were "non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution".
They were said to have been retrieved from a mine in Cuzco, Peru.
Many experts dismissed Maussan's case as an impossible stunt, after a number of studies on similar remains found the various specimens in question were modified using animal and human bones.
Furious officials later launched a criminal probe into the so-called UFO expert after it was alleged he stole the "non-human" bodies.
Peru's Culture Minister Leslie Urteaga said the corpses were pre-Hispanic objects and vowed to get to the bottom of how they were transported to Mexico City.
Maussan insisted he had "done absolutely nothing illegal", but couldn't answer how he got the specimens to the Mexican capital.
The journalist made similar claims in 2017 which were refuted by the country's prosecutor's office who said the bodies were actually "recently manufactured dolls, which have been covered with a mixture of paper and synthetic glue to simulate the presence of skin."
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A report added they were "not the remains of ancestral aliens that they have tried to present" but rather almost certainly human-made.
It was researcher Zuniga's opinion that the specimens presented to lawmakers in September were probably fake, but the new figures were certainly real.
Maussan admitted on Tuesday: "None of the scientists say [the study results] prove that they are extraterrestrials, but I go further."
Others offered different theories about the bodies' origins.
Argentine surgeon Celestino Adolfo Piotto said he had reviewed test results and images and believed they were a more evolved version of today's human beings - "our descendants".
Lawmaker Sergio Gutiérrez Luna said "all ideas and all proposals will always be welcome to debate them, hear them to agree with or not", as Mexican congressman Sergio Gutierrez called for all information about UFOs to be made public.
