Claim: Nazca Mummy Maria Was a Living Non-Human Creature

[NorCal Dave]

A variety of different specimens from Peru have been presented in various media outlets since around 2015. Collectively they are often referred to as "Nazca Mummies", and while this is probably not a good descriptor for them, it's the common one most people know, so we'll stick with that. The specimens range in size and physical appearance from little 60cm doll-like creatures to more human sized ones. While there is lot of variations, most specimens appear to be bipedal, vaguely human-like and have 3 fingers and/or toes.

The proponents and promoters of these various specimens, including the dubious UFO/alien journalist Jamie Maussan, maintain that these are the remains of once living creatures. The proponents offer various explanations for their existence including, but not limited to: aliens, alien-human hybrids, alien engineered human-hybrids, an ancient human adjacent species, time traveling future humans and any other combination one can dream up.

While it's unclear how many of these specimens actually exist, proponents point to upwards of 20 or more. Even in that number, it appears that no 2 are alike with many being radically different from others. There is no species type.

In what appears to be a nod to the naming of groundbreaking ancient hominin species types such as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) and Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus,) the proponents of the Nazca mummies have also assigned names to the various specimens including, Josefina, Wawati, Albert, Montserrat, Maria and others.

Various studies by various people have been done on various specimens, including DNA, radiocarbon dating, x-rays and CT scans. The resulting mishmash of confusing and often contradictory information leads to a number of claims and counter claims that often devolves into several Strawman arguments and outright Gish Gallops.

To date, there have been not legitimate studies of any specimens in any respected journal of Anthropology, Archaeology, Peruvian Studies or similar fields. Rather, the results of scatter shot studies have been presented on the fringe TV network Gaia, on Maussan's own fringe news show Tencior Milinium, or in almost side-show like presentations before the Peruvian and Mexican congresses. See this thread: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/alien-bodies-at-a-mexican-uap-hearing.13163

Much of the information for these specimens can be found on the 2 websites dedicated to them including tridactyls.org and the-alien-project.com.

As noted, the common tactic of the proponents is to confuse the various studies on various specimens and then relate them to other specimens making it difficult to discuss just one aspect of any one specimen. For example, one of the small 60cm specimens presented before the Mexican congress was Josefina. Various x-rays and scans made it clear that her hand bones were all mixed up and her head had been constructed using a llama skull. When this became obvious, Josefina exited the scene and is no longer talked about and is not on the tridactyls.org list of mummies. However, when the DICOMs of the larger Montserrat mummy were made available to certain people, one of the web designers suggested:

but now that the DICOMs are public, I hope skeptics will seriously test their llama skull hypothesis.

This is clearly a Strawman argument, as the claim of a llama skull was related to Josefina, and no one has yet made that claim for Montserrat.

Regarding Montserrat's supposedly publicly available DICOMs, it wasn't quite the case. One had to apply to the tridactyls.org people, with appropriate credentials, to be allowed access. And if one was granted access, they had to agree to being cited just for looking at the files:

https://tridactyls.org

Highly dubious.

However, tridactyls.org did release the DICOMs for Wawati and Maria. So, we have those files and a number of photos and x-rays of Maria allowing us to concentrate solely on her. While exactly what she was supposed to be, alien, future human or whatever is unclear, the proponents all claim she was an actual living creature. That is, if we were to go in time to whenever she supposedly lived, we would see her walking around and interacting in the environment.

The claim is that she was a naturally evolved or engineered active, living, breathing 3 fingered, 3 toed creature. The counter-claim is that she is, to use the old side-show slang term, a gaff. A specimen created of various parts and pieces to produce a specimen designed to look like a tridactyl creature. A fake. Let's use what evidence is available to see which is more likely.

Just to clarify, little of what follows is original on my part, rather I collected evidence about Maria from various threads, reports and websites, so big shout out to @Charlie Wiser @Mendel @Gaspa @Edward Current @deirdre @JMartJr and everyone else that contributed to the various threads.

To begin with, we should establish Maria's provenience and provenance. Something we can't do. If the people at tridacyls.org have any idea where she actually came from, they don't share it. Rather, even tridacyls.org admits that most if not all the Nazca mummies came from a convicted grave robber and con-man:

2015: Leandro Benedicto Rivera Sarmiento (a.k.a. "Mario Peruano") apparently discovers a cave or tunnel system in the Peruvian desert containing tridactyl specimens, complete bodies, and artifacts. Yet to be verified.

https://tridactyls.org/timeline

Mario's real name is Leandro Benedicto Rivera Sarmiento. According to the newspaper Los Andes, in 2007 he was captured in Puno together with ten people for swindling under the modality of the "waterfall story, gold tumi and the theft of species". In 2010, different media outlets accused him of being a member of the Palpeños de Ica gang, dedicated to looting archaeological remains of the Nasca culture.
...
In 2017, following reports of excavation in an area of intangibility, the Ministry of Culture (Mincul) and the Public Prosecutor's Office conducted proceedings that resulted in the formalization of a complaint. On April 19, 2022, the Judiciary sentenced Leandro Benedicto Rivera Sarmiento to four years of imprisonment and the payment of PEN 25 000 for the crime against cultural property in the modality of attacks against Archaeological Monuments to the detriment of the State.

- https://irna.fr/From-Sensation-to-Condemnation-The-story-behind-the-so-called-Nazca-Mummies.html

So, right from the start we have issues. Our specimen has no known provenance, or the place she was originally found in situ. At best we have a story about a secret cave somewhere from a con-man. There doesn't seem to be much of a clear provenience, or chain of custody either. How Maria got from wherever she was supposedly discovered to being x-rayed and scanned is questionable.

People involved in fringe-like discoveries often overlook or completely ignore provenance and provenience, partially because they fail to understand it importance and partially because it interferes with their claims. Testing, scanning and sampling can be completely irrelevant if no one knows where a specimen came from or where it's been. All the claims the mummy proponents make about the diatomaceous earth found on the specimens as related to diatomaceous earth in a supposed cave is meaningless, if they can't show the specimen was ever in that cave. Diatomaceous earth is in 1/3 or more of the pool filters in the US and can be bought in 50# bags at any feed store. I can go out to my shop and make a gaff covered in diatomaceous earth this afternoon. In archaeology, where something was found and where it's been is vitally important.

In fact, one of the few published papers (in a vanity journal that will publish anything for a fee) about the Nazca mummies, BIOMETRIC MORPHO-ANATOMICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND DATING OF THE ANTIQUITY OF A TRIDACTYL HUMANOID SPECIMEN: REGARDING THE CASE OF NASCA-PERU (Edgar Hernández-Huaripaucar et .al) seems to understand the importance of an artifact or specimen's origin:

Social bioarcheology is an interdisciplinary field that combines archeology with biological anthropology and social anthropology to study the relationships between biology and culture in past human populations. It focuses on the analysis of human remains and their archeological context to understand aspects such as health, diet, mobility, funeral practices and other social and cultural dimensions of ancient populations (Agarwal and Glencross, 2011).

In summary, it is comprehensively assumed that social archeology and bioarcheology can provide a comprehensive view of how past societies interacted with their environment, how they managed natural resources, and how they adapted to environmental changes over time.

https://tastio-testing.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Tridactyls/assets/pdfs/UNICA/137n5RGSAING.pdf

The authors, none of whom are bioarcheologists or anything related, understand the importance of the "archeological context", but then just ignore the fact that their specimen has none.

Nevertheless, we can at least look at the known reports, photos, x-rays and DICOMs of Maria. Bearing in mind, we have no real idea where these images and reports are coming from, and we are taking tridactyl.org or the-alien-project.com at their word that the evidence provided corresponds to the mummy identified as Maria.

First up is just a cursory look at her face and head:

https://tridactyls.org

The head appears to be a roughly human shaped skull, but the face is unique. Big full lips and large oversized alien style eye sockets, almost a cross between a stylized Olmec head and a classic grey:

However, if one goes to the DICOMs provided by tridactyl.org for Maria, we find that the large grey alien eyes are merely a sculpted feature on an otherwise normal human skull face:

https://tridactyls.org

It's a bit unclear, as nobody involved with these specimens seems to have devised a reliable cataloging scheme, or at least no one know to outsiders. Rather they are often delineated by the aforementioned, names like Albert and Maria, but in the mentioned paper by Huaripaucar et.al, it appears they were studying Maria. They catalog her as M001 and it appears "Maria" may have translated into English as "Mary":

The specimen known as "the mummy Mary" was codified as specimen M001;

So, if they are looking at Maria, and I think they are, they also include 3D DICOM of her skull:

https://tastio-testing.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Tridactyls/assets/pdfs/UNICA/137n5RGSAING.pdf

The skull shows obvious signs of alteration and/or elongation, something common in various Andean cultures, particularly the Paracas culture (800BCE-100BCE) in the Nazca region:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracas_culture

While it shows some enlargement, elongation and shaping consistent with various Nazca cultures, it also shows normal eye sockets. Such that the authors commented that her actual eyes would have bulged out:

in the orbital region there is also a marked protrusion of the eyeballs

I would argue the eyeballs have a "marked protrusion" because they don't fit the normal eye sockets on the skull. If this was a real creature it's eyes would protrude almost comically.

There is some discussion in various reports about Maria's spine. To make sense of those here is a standard human spine:

Huaripaucar et.al describe the spine this way (bold by me):

Other relevant findings are observed at the spine level that differ from normal human anatomy, some anatomical variants, and arthroscopic lesions at different vertebral levels. Thus, for example, seven cervical vertebrae (C), twelve thoracic vertebrae (T), four lumbar vertebrae (L) and a sacrum (S) are observed; emphasizing that in a normal human there are five lumbar vertebrae.

The imaging analysis according to the pathological anatomy at the level of T2, T7, T12 and L1 are identified vertebral arthropathies (probably osteoarthritis and osteoarthritis), which added to the arthropathies observed in the hands and feet would be a case of polyarthritis. At the level of the pelvis, a disjunction is visualized between the fifth lumbar vertebra (L5) and the base of the sacrum, i.e. on the promontory. The promontory is a prominence formed by the union of L5 with the sacrum, and is an anatomical reference point for separating the L5 from the sacrum.

Due to the presence of a large lesion and perforation of the perineum region and pelvic cavity, it is observed that such extensive lesion involves the terminal part of the spine, so the coccyx and the distal part of the sacrum, exactly the last two sacral portions (S4 and S5) are absent.

https://tastio-testing.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Tridactyls/assets/pdfs/UNICA/137n5RGSAING.pdf

Note the presence of "osteoarthritis and osteoarthritis". If Maria is alien, I guess aliens get arthritis like humans do. If Maria is a time traveling future human, I would have hoped they had figured out arthritis by then. If Maria is, at her core, the looted remains of a Paracas or other Nazca culture individual, then these common human diseases are easily explained. We also have the bottom portion of her spine "absent" due to the "presence of a large lesion and perforation or the perineum region and pelvic cavity". Proponents claim that this lack of a coccyx and lower sacral vertebrae is a natural trait indicative of Maria' non-human physiology. But these guys are saying it was cut out!

Huaripaucar et.al, also note the presence of "four lumbar vertebrae" (L1-L4) while normal humans have 5 lumbar vertebrae. However, when the webmaster of tridacyls.org presented a report from the Ministry of Cultures Dr's that looked at Maria they found 5 lumbar vertebrae:

With the "sacralization" of L5:

Sacralization is a common irregularity of the spine, where the fifth vertebra is fused to the sacrum bone at the bottom of the spine. The fifth lumbar vertebra, known as L5, may fuse fully or partially on either side of the sacrum, or on both sides. Sacralization is a congenital anomaly that occurs in the embryo.

https://www.healthline.com/health/sacralization

So, Maria was likely born with this "common irregularity" and there is nothing unusual about it. Maria's spine is a mysterious mix of human bones with missing vertebrae or is consistent with a normal human with arthritis, a sacralized L5 and her lower spine having been removed at some point. Maybe during grave robbing.

This most unusual and important feature of Maria are her hands and feet. Proponents claim she is a "natural tridactyl" and that she existed with this condition during life. These same proponents seem unable to explain simple things that are evident from x-rays and the flashier but more difficult to interpret 3D images from the DICOM scans. Here is a 3D image from Huaripaucar et.al:

https://tastio-testing.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Tridactyls/assets/pdfs/UNICA/137n5RGSAING.pdf

Not only does Maria have extra bones in her fingers that don't really seem to fit and a chunk of bone where maybe another finger might have been, she has no palm and no thumb. A palm is a collection of bones, cartilage, muscle and tendons that gives a support for the fingers. Imagine walking around with fingers almost twice their normal length sprouting right off your wrist. They might not be all that useful for grabbing things, but since Maria has no opposable thumb, she's not grasping much. ASU has a great little demonstration of what life without thumbs would be like:

https://askananthropologist.asu.edu/experiments/thumbs

Yes, in our modern society, individuals that have lost or don't have thumbs can get by, but it's not an evolutionary trait our ancestors developed. For the amount of human bones and DNA in Maria, it seems very unlikely that she was a descendent of hominins or primates that lacked thumbs, as there are none in the fossil record. Ever.

Finaly, we have Maria's tridactyl feet. While proponents of the Nazca mummies as living creatures like to push the DICOMs, there are some x-rays of Maria floating around, which are much easier to understand. From a now unavailable video we have this x-ray, claimed to be of Maria, being studied by a Dr. Flavio Estrada Moreno, an anthropologist at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos:

The tridactyl feet are compared to human ones. Clearly the tridactyl feet are non-functioning, with gaps for joints and long unsupported toes. One can also see the outer edge of the upper part of the foot, the tarsus-metatarsus joint, where the structure for 2 other toes would have been. Those toes seem to have been elongated with human finger bones:

So, her foot is a non-functioning an assemblage of mixed-up human bones. And it appears that the DICOMs provided by tridactyls.org shows the same foot assembly as seen in th ex-rays:

trydacyls.org

We see some human foot bones at the top, then (yellowa) a gap resulting in a non-functioning joint, then (blue) some human foot metacarpals, another non-functioning joint followed (red) with human proximal phalanges (finger bones), then more human foot bones (blue), phalanges. She also lacks any form of heel or heel bone.

The proponents of the Nazca mummies would say Maria is the remains of a once living creature, but when we look at the available evidence what do we find.

• The majority, if not all, of Maria's remains are human. This is a human skeleton with an elongated skull likely buried in a sitting position, which is consistent with the Paracas and other Nazca cultures.
• She has arthritis and a fused L5 in her spine, consistent with humans.
• Part of her lower spine is missing where there is a large lesion.
• Her cartoonish facial features are inconsistent with her facial skeletal structure.
• Her largely non-functioning hands are made up of human finger bones, but with some parts absent and others added to create very long unsupported fingers with no thumb.
• Her feet are a non-functioning assemblage of human foot and hand bones with no heel, meaning she could not walk or stand on them giving the rest of her skeleton is that of a normal human.

Giving these observations, Maria's complete lack of provenance and province aside from a known grave robber, and the history of the individuals promoting her, I would argue she is a gaff. She is made up largely of an indigenous individual who's grave was looted for profit and modified to fit a narrative of a tridactyl aliens/human-hybrid sideshow perpetrated by people with a history of using indigenous remains for sensationalized alien claims.

EDIT: corrected some grammar and sourcing.

 

[JMartJr]

Not only does Maria have extra bones in her fingers that don't really seem to fit and a chunk of bone where maybe another finger might have been, she has no palm and no thumb.

(Emphasis added)

Recognizing the difficulties in interpreting a 2D image of a 3D object, I now suspect that the projecting bits at the lower right are the ends of the radius and ulna, truncated by the arbitrary boundary where the 3D imaging chops off.

It is of course quite possible that I am interpreting it incorrectly, and even if correct it does not invalidate the overwhelming weight of other evidence that this is a hoax.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

More claims about Maria including the analyses presented on the Alien Project and Tridactyl websites, which claim she is a new species they've dubbed Jamin palpanensis but which all fail to rule out that she is 100% mutilated human:

Heel bone

Maria does have a calcaneus, the large heel bone in the normal human foot to which the Achilles tendon (end of the calf muscles) attaches:

White arrow below is the Achilles tendon attaching to the calcaneus (C) in a normal human foot. The back half of the calcaneus is missing in Maria (though not Montserrat). In a now deleted slideshow on the Alien Project website, "biologist" Jose de la Cruz claims her Achilles tendon is attached to the talus bone (T), which sits on top of the calcaneus and has an entirely different function from the calcaneus.

I attempted to capture a screen shot of Maria's 3D scan that may show this.

Screenshot of the deleted slideshow, source: [Wayback machine captured Nov 2023]. "os astrogale = talus bone

The back of the calcaneus is weight-bearing. Without it, Maria would topple backwards when standing upright. Therefore she must've tilted forward while walking. This changes her center of gravity and would require the evolution of clearly visible differences (compared to human) in her entire foot, leg, hip, and spine structure, yet other than the missing toes her skeleton is identical to a human.

Cranial capacity

Claim: "19% higher than for humans" (Alien Project)
"higher cranial capacity than in humans" (Tridactyls.org)
This claim is for another post.

DNA

Claim: 23-34% human, the rest is bacteria, "other", and/or unclassified.

The only actual reports that I can find from the clickable lines were not from these three labs, but from two others including:

Lakehead: analyzed 6 samples of which 3 had enough DNA for analysis (from her finger, toe, spine). Conclusion: all the samples had DNA from more than one individual (ie. contamination) with the toe and spine having DNA from the same individual.

There is not sufficient data to include nor exclude Palm of right hand (1) having a common source of DNA to Finger of left foot (2) and Vertebrae (6) with any confidence.

Source: Lakehead DNA report p5

If the finger sample was from an added bone (to elongate it), we would expect it not to match the toe and spine but there was insufficient data and we're not told which bone was used.

Note: This haphazard reporting of results - a summary graphic with no links to the reports, and two other reports with no layman analysis - suggests to me that the website is controlling the narrative to give the public skewed impressions of the science being done.

Tridactyls.org is perpetuating the error of assigning the sample labeled "Ancient003" to Maria's hand, on their DNA results page. That specimen is actually one of the giant disembodied hands so I'm not including hit.

Species name: Jamin palpanensis

The Alien Project page on Maria has this summary, in all-caps (screenshotted from from the original French with Google Translate applied, as that translation is better than the English version of the site, but this doesn't change the point I'm about to make).

View Source reveals this info was entered in normal upper and lower case, so the all-caps appearance is coded into the style:

JAMIN PALPANESIS was typed as Jamin Palpanensis, upper case P. Any working scientist with even a passing knowledge of biology (not to mention any high school biology student) knows that the genus name has initial cap but the species name is always lower case. This error is extremely amateurish, to say the least.

Age

Carbon dating from two labs give an age of about 1720-1800 years (i.e. died 200-300 AD). Source: Link to C14 reports. One of the reports describes her sample as a skin/keratin sample and includes a photo of it.

Source: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Institute of Physics, link to pdf

Other

• presence of joints (as in humans)
• normal internal organs and skeleton on 3D scan (other than hands, feet and spine described in NorCal Dave's OP)
• skin and fingerprints (as in humans)
• absence of ear flaps, hair, fur (easy to remove)

Main source: Maria on the Alien Project

HOW do I delete the string of attachments below which I included within the text of my post? ETA: Confused rn because only one is showing up in the posted post. Before, they all were, and deleting them removed them from the post as well.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Main source: Maria on the Alien Project

I find it particularly interesting when we can use the proponent's own information to show how Maria is just a human with some parts missing/added to her hands and feet. The much-trumpeted DICOMs on tridactyl.org seems to show the same assembled foot found in x=rays of her feet.

 

[John J.]

Just a heads-up for anyone not familiar with the subject:

This thread is discussing the claims made by Mexican UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Maussan and a small number of collaborators about their "specimen" that they have called "Maria".

However, Maria- and Maussan's past activities with human and animal remains- exist in a context, which might be important in assessing whatever evidence the Maussan team disclose, and their stated interpretations of that evidence.
Maussan has a track record of presenting manipulated human and animal remains as newly-discovered species.
He continues to claim that a number of approx. 60cm tall figures, whose skulls are made from worked llama skulls and whose other constituent bones probably include finger bones from human infants, are actually extraterrestrials or of other exotic origin;
see the thread (already linked to by the OP)
Alien Bodies at a Mexican UAP Hearing (click blue text for link).

There has also been discussion relevant to this thread here,
Latin Disclosure initiative releases raw medical DICOM files on tridactyls, where a member strongly supportive of Maussan's claims advised us of the release of digital files of radiography (including MRI) images of Maria and other claimed remains of interest held by Maussan.

 

[Mendel]

There has also been discussion relevant to this thread here,
Latin Disclosure initiative releases raw medical DICOM files on tridactyls, where a member strongly supportive of Maussan's claims advised us of the release of digital files of radiography (including MRI) images of Maria and other claimed remains of interest held by Maussan.

Readers need to sign up and log in with Metabunk to see this. The discussion is somewhat rambling, so it was decided to not expose it to search engines and AI training.

Other pertinent discussions are https://www.metabunk.org/threads/us...s-the-small-nazca-mummies-are-not-real.13500/ and https://www.metabunk.org/threads/hoax-three-fingered-nazca-mummy.8841/ (this one is from 2017!).