2006. In the summer of 2006, three years exactly since discovering that the Starchild's nuclear DNA could not be recovered by the current technology, and precisely when Jason and Ripan predicted a breakthrough might occur, the breakthrough did occur. But it was not in the sensitivity of the primers used to recover DNA, as was expected. It was much, much better than that. It was a new technique that did away with primers entirely!

454 Life Sciences of Branford, Connecticut, announced that it had found a way of sequencing DNA in a base-pair by base-pair arrangement, bringing all 3.0 billion base pairs in an average human genome within eventual reach of their sequencing machines. This was astounding news, but even more astounding was that it was already being applied to sequencing the elusive nuclear DNA of Neanderthals. Experts around the world were already hard at work on it, having sequenced the first few million base pairs, and they expected to complete the entire Neanderthal genome by the end of 2008.

While this was extremely welcome news in its own right, what flew under the radar was that this same technology could be applied to recover the entire genome of the Starchild! It meant we can now sequence every gene in every chromosome contributed by its human mother and its father, whatever he was. We will be able to recover its genome and-just as others will do with the Neanderthal genome in 2008-we will be able to compare the Starchild's father's DNA, gene by gene, with those of normal humans to precisely determine how far or near he was relative to the human norms.

That glorious day is now expected to be sometime in 2010. It could be as early as 2009, but the best guess now is 2010, give or take a few months. Inasmuch as we have already endured eight years of this interminable wait, two years more does not seem so daunting. In fact, as I have started to say when asked, I think that after what I've been through in the preceding eight years, I can do two more standing on my head in a deep mud puddle.

Today. Upside down or upright, we can settle into the two-year wait secure in knowing every indication of numerous conclusive scientific tests strongly suggests that we will ultimately prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Starchild skull belonged to a being who was a product of mating-whether natural or in vitro-between a human mother and a father who was surely something other than entirely human. But will that make him an "alien" in the extraterrestrial sense of the word?

As with Neanderthals, it will depend on where his genome falls in relation to normal humans. Will it be fractionally different, or as much as 1%? Or how about 2%? Or 3%? Certainly that would make him as alien as E.T., and the Starchild's incredibly different physiology and morphology certainly points in that direction. All we have to do is be patient, lay our bets, and wait.

For more information or to purchase click here: The Starchild Skull -- Genetic Enigma or Human-Alien Hybrid?