Our unusual story began 80 years ago with the innocent curiosity of a teenage girl on a visit to Copper Canyon, 100 miles south of Chihuahua in Mexico in the United States. She was told by her family to stay away from the area of some old deserted mines near the place they were visiting, but on the pretext of going out for a walk she went to the old mine caves to discover the interesting area.

She started exploring the mine tunnels till she came upon what looked like a human skeleton lying on its back and close to it was something even more curious — a small mound from which a misshapen tiny hand was holding the arm of the larger skeleton. Since the mud that covered the mound could easily be removed, the girl  cleared it to see a most unusual and misshapen skeleton of a child. She decided to collect the bones to show at a school project or something. She hid the bones in a ravine at the bottom of a tree nearby to come and collect them the next day.

As luck would have it, it started raining the next day and rained continuously for two days. As soon as the rains stopped, the girl went out to look for her skeletons only to find to her dismay that all the bones had been washed away — all but the two skulls that had somehow stuck to some bushes. She picked them up and found that the jaw of the larger skeleton and the entire lower face of the stranger looking smaller skull had been broken. She took them and kept them in a store in her home, which is where they remained till before she died or she gave them to a family. As far as the small unusually shaped skull was concerned, it was quite apparent to her at that time that it was that of an abnormal child.

A couple in El Paso, Ray and Melanie Young, came by those skulls. Melanie who had been a neonatal nurse found the smaller, oddly shaped skull quite intriguing. She had seen many abnormalities in children but the strange shape of the small skull puzzled her. She wanted to have it studied professionally came to know of an expert in the department of ancient skulls and their origins, Lloyd Pye. The researcher agreed to examine the skull and had it sent to the National Institute of Health database to check the DNA of the smaller skull.

The results were startling to say the least. The skeletons were 900 years old. The larger skull was that of an adult woman but the smaller was that of a child of five to six years old. But that was just the beginning of the findings. Thousands of strands of DNA were checked and 265 base pairs in the child’s skull were human but 342 pairs were of unknown origin — meaning the genetic makeup was something that did not belong to any species on Earth.

There are about three billion base pairs of DNA in the skull and many thousand have been recovered by the database. But till more results are not in, final answers or a proper scientific report cannot be completed. Lloyd Pye has taken upon himself to continue his 12-year research on the smaller skull and has named it ‘Starchild’.

The reason firstly is because Pye is a firm believer in the idea that aliens from another planet did come to Earth in the distant past and could have bred with humans. His explanation to the reason for the human and unknown DNA found is that the child had an alien father and a human mother.

The differences found in the chemical and physical properties of the Starchild are so puzzling that serious minded scientists and researchers too can either not come to any conclusion as to the origin of this strange skull or actually believe Pye’s explanation of some sort of alien DNA. The differences are quite astounding as compared to human physical aspects.

One is that the bone is half as thick as that of a normal human but is two to three times stronger. This strength in the bone is due to the fact that it has chemical properties which are more like tooth enamel than bone and also has more collagen.

Additionally there are strange red fibres that are inside the bone’s matrix which are not blood or any other known substance.

The eye sockets are most unlike humans but very powerful and perfectly shaped. There are no frontal sinuses and has a strange kind of crease that goes from the top of its head to the base of the back of its head and its brain is not only one-third bigger but also heavier for the size of its head, meaning that it probably possessed more intelligence.

All this is scientific evidence but the research has far to go as DNA sequencing continues. And so does the mystery of the ‘Starchild’.