IT’s extraordinary news.

It needs extraordinary evidence.

Five objects claimed to be mummified bodies from Peru have been presented as evidence of alien visitation.

They’re humanoid.

Some are very humanoid.

What marks the dessicated bodies out as ‘extraterrestrials’ is the apparent three-fingered hands they possesses. Elongated heads. And three-toed feet.

They also seem somewhat ‘odd’ as most mummified remains have been darkened by the heat and chemical processes that dry them out.

These are stark white.

All we know of them so far are Youtube videos that have appeared on alien enthusiast sites.

Russian news media has been quoting ‘lead researcher’ Konstantin Korotkov as claiming he’s conducted extensive scientistic tests on the remains.

“They could be extraterrestrials or bio robots,” Russia Today (RT) quotes Korotkov as saying.

He’s also on the record as saying radiocarbon-dating shows one of the mummies is 1700 years old.

But none of these results have yet been presented for analysis or verification, as per the standard scientific process.

ALIEN ‘AUTOPSY’

The ‘alien’ mummies have not been made available for examination.

The only evidence remains the video files, and the descriptions made by their ‘discoverer’ — Konstantin Korotkov - and ‘specialists’ in his employ.

He says ‘Maria’ — the best preserved body — was found by a Peruvian peasant.

He describes it as having an elongate skull. The rib structure is unusual. There are also only three appendages on its hands and feet.

According to Russia’s Mir24.tv, ‘Maria’s’ body is so well preserved that the location of internal organs can still be discerned.

“We clearly see the contours of the trachea and the main bronchi, we clearly see the contours of the heart and chambers, there even the contours of the valves are visible. We can see quite clearly the contours of the diaphragm, liver and spleen, “it quotes radiologist Natalia Zaloznaya as saying.

Those are very human organs.

“This humanoid being also has 23 chromosomes, as we have. Now there is already a detailed analysis to see whether all the chromosomes, whether all amino acids are located just like we have. Does it correspond to some people who live in South America, Africa or elsewhere, and are there any differences?” Mir24.tv attributes Professor Konstantin Korotkov of the National Research University Konstantin Korotkov as saying.

He also claims the white powder covering the body is a sign of advanced technology: It is cadmium chloride, he says, and itsts antibacterial effect preserved the body.

He says’s he’s waiting for permission from Peruvian authorities before conducting further experiments.

MISSING CREDENTIALS

Korotkov has claimed that he is a geneticist, and that he works for the St. Petersburg University in Russia. But any search for his name under that banner produces no results.

This is odd, as almost all qualified academics are given their own profile web pages to assist with contacts relating to their research.

Korotkov has also claimed to be affiliated with the National Research University of St Petersburg. This does not exist.

His personal web page, while it claims the title “Professor”, gives no academic link or profile. And his extensive list of scientific publications does not include any traceable links to credible scientific journals.

But a search of Korotkov’s history shows he claims to have invented a “Bio-Well” camera which captures ‘energy fields’ in humans and nature. He has it for sale

A series of photos he previously claimed showed a human soul leaving the human body was later traced to a heat-map of a human body before, during and after entering a sauna.

Mexican journalist, Jaime Maussan, and forensic analyst Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, presented a similar distorted body in 2015 as evidence of alien-human crossbreeding. This was later found to be a mummified child.

Both have contribute to presenting and ‘proving’ the latest ‘find’.

Senior Fellow of Biomedical Science with the American Council on Science and Health Alex Berezow has been outspoken in his criticism of coverage of the ‘alien’ mummies.

“Truthfully, no respectable news outlet should have covered this,” he writes. “The head researcher is Konstantin Korotkov, a well-known crank who once claimed to have photographed a soul leaving a human body. He is a hoaxer, so this is a non-story...”

He goes on to highlight how this is a part of an increasing disinformation campaign coming out of Russia.

“A complete hoax was circulated among Russian state-controlled media as legitimate news, and the Western media fell for it,” he writes. “Sure, some of them provided “caveats,” but the point is that Russian propaganda has so infiltrated the public discourse that it appears regularly in mainstream Western media outlets. That’s shocking.”

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

Peruvian authorities are upset.

They claim the mummies may be the result of a looting attack on an historical site in 2015.

At least one of the mummies is in a classic Nazca pose. The culture, which is responsible for the awe-inspiring stone line geoglyphs which cover part of a Peruvian desert, would bundle their dead up tightly in rugs and sheets in a sitting position. These were then left in grottos to dry. Some 171 mummies have been verifiably excavated from a site at Tenahaha. These have been dated to about 1200 years of age — the same as Korotkov’s claim.

RELATED: Did a famous British archaeologist fake the world’s ‘oldest map’?

A group Peruvian researchers late last week issued a statement saying the presentation of the ‘alien’ mummies “has violated numerous national and international norms.”

They believe the fragile mummies have been deliberately distorted just enough to justify calling them ‘alien’. This would involve breaking and manipulating the hands and feet — and covering up the evidence with some form of whitewash.

“I particularly find repulsive that anyone would dehumanise deceased human bodies. You can’t take away the condition of human to a human being!” professor of forensic sciences at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia Guido Lombardi told Live Science.

Tomb robbers from the city of Palpa are known to have entered the Nazca archaeological reserve in 2015 in search of marketable artefacts, says the Inkari-Cusco archaeological institute.

The institute’s president, Thierry Jamin, told Live Science that he had identified the leader of the looters as Mario.

“Mario is a treasure hunter. He is a delinquent, who is well known to the police services of the Nazca region. It [his group] has looted archaeological sites on the Peruvian coast for more than 20 years. And justice does not do much to stop him,” he says.

Some Peruvian mummies do feature elongate skulls. But archaeologists have shown this is the result of deliberate deformation of children’s bodies as they develop — similar to the elongation of necks in some African cultures, and the tying-up of feet to make them unnaturally small in China. The elongated skull practice was duplicated by some eastern European cultures.