Mexico aliens: alien bodies, Mexican government hearing explained as corpses from Peru shown by Jaime Maussan

In July, the US Congress heard from three whistle blowers on how the government was "hiding crucial information" about UFOs just months after Nasa's first public UFO meeting.

Now, the Mexican Congress has held a similar event that - if its claims prove to be legitimate - could be considered a turning point in the development of human civilisation and will likely increase public interest in extraterrestrial life and UFOs.

On Tuesday (12 September), two bodies said to be from a "non-human" alien species and at least 1,000 years old were put on public display. The mummified remains - displayed in windowed boxes - were allegedly retrieved from Cusco, Peru.

Whether or not the remains are the real deal remains to be seen. But let's just say there's probably a reason you haven't had your favourite TV programme interrupted by breaking news of confirmation of alien life...

Attempting to add some credence to the event was host Jaime Maussan, a Mexican journalist and ufologist who has been studying extraterrestrial phenomena for years.

Under oath, Maussan briefed officials from the US and the Mexican governments about his findings, and claimed that scientists at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) recently examined the specimens and used radiocarbon dating to analyse DNA evidence.

"These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution," he said. "These aren't beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in diatom (algae) mines and were later fossilised," Maussan told attendees, according to a Spanish news outlet, Marca.

Maussan said that more than 30% of the specimen's DNA was "unknown", and that X-rays had revealed one of the bodies contained "eggs", and that both had implants composed of incredibly rare metals, including Osmium.

The X-ray images in question were reportedly shown on screens during the event, although their authenticity is unknown.

Maussan was joined by Ryan Graves, a former US Navy pilot and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace who has previously claimed to have seen such sightings while flying.

But Maussan's claims of mummified alien bodies have been debunked before: in 2017, a mummified body that he purported to be of alien origin was found to be that of a human child.

As part of the event, videos of "UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena" were shown, and noted professor Abraham Avi Loeb - a former director of the Harvard Astronomy Department - urged the Mexican government to permit national scientists to do research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

In other news - for which you can probably drop that massive pinch of salt you've been holding - Nasa announced that a newly discovered exoplanet around 120 light years away from Earth may have water-covered surfaces, making it a candidate to support life.

Early observations of K2-18b by the James Webb Telescope also suggest the planet's atmosphere may contain dimethyl sulphide (DMS), a molecule primarily associated with microbial life such as marine phytoplankton on Earth, suggesting the possibility of biological activity.

But scientists have tempered expectations, saying "more observations are needed to determine whether it is in fact DMS that we're seeing."