Lincoln. In Lincoln, Nebraska, an ophthalmologist surgeon named Fred Mausolf studied the Starchild's extraordinarily shallow eye sockets. He found them to be unlike normal human eye sockets in virtually every way. The foramen openings for both the optic nerves and the associated nerves and blood vessels needed to make a human eyeball function properly were skewed down and inside to the middle part of the nose, which would have put the Starchild's eyeballs-assuming it had eyeballs-well below where human eyes normally were positioned. Also, their inner surface areas, while astonishingly shallow, were symmetrical to an equally astonishing degree. This expert could not imagine how those eye sockets-as bizarre as they were-could be the result of deformity. Again, the Starchild's genes seemed to have told them to grow that way, and if that were true, I could only conclude that they weren't normal human genes.

New Orleans. In my home city of New Orleans, Louisiana, Dr. Joseph Smith, a chief radiologist at a children's hospital, arranged a CAT scan that established none of the Starchild's cranial sutures were fused in any way. He ruled out deformity as a result of cranial suture fusion-especially the crease in the saggital suture between the expanded parietals. Also, inexplicably, the Starchild's inner ears were shown to be on the order of twice normal size and, once again, perfectly symmetrical. Then Carbon 14 analysis showed that death for both skulls had occurred 900 years ago, ± 40 years.

2003. The Holy Grail of biological testing, DNA analysis, was carried out by Trace Genetics in the summer of 2003 using equipment at the University of California at Davis. Researchers Jason Eshleman and Ripan Malhi found that burial in a mine tunnel for 900 years was like preserving both skulls in a climate-controlled storage locker. The human skull produced an easy recovery of its mitochondrial DNA, showing it was from a common haplogroup for Mesoamericans, haplogroup A. Its nuclear DNA was also recovered easily, showing it was a female. One down, one to go.

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