The alleged bodies of two “non-human beings” were presented during a congressional hearing in Mexico, generating a mixture of surprise, disbelief and ridicule on social media on Wednesday.

The purported mummified remains were exhibited in two small display cases on Tuesday – the first time the Mexican Congress has officially addressed the issue of possible extraterrestrial life.

The alleged corpses, which had a grayish color and facial features similar to humans, were brought by Jaime Maussan, a controversial Mexican journalist and researcher who reported finding them in Peru in 2017.

“They are non-human beings. We don’t want to call them extraterrestrials because we don’t know,” Maussan said during the session called by ruling party lawmaker Sergio Gutierrez, who defended the event as being in the “public interest”.

Maussan cited carbon dating analysis by the National Autonomous University of Mexico that he said showed “these beings are around 1,000 years old”.

The university’s physics institute confirmed in a statement that it had carried out tests but only to determine the age and not the origin of the specimens.

Its laboratory “distances itself from any subsequent use, interpretation or misrepresentation made with the results it issues”, a statement said.

During the hearing, Gutierrez asked the speakers to swear to tell the truth.

He said Maussan requested the session after a US congressional committee in July was told by a former intelligence official that humans were not alone in the universe and American authorities were covering up the evidence.

In May, the US space agency NASA held its first public meeting on the issue, and urged a more rigorous scientific approach to clarify the origin of so-called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).

Mexican journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan speaking at the Mexican Congress in Mexico City.

The Mexican hearing generated both astonishment and mockery, including jokes accompanied by photos of the alien creature in the movie E.T.

The event “shows the contempt that this country has for science”, one user wrote on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter.

Others shared videos of the event with the words “The Martians have arrived”, while there was a tongue-in-cheek call for Maussan to be named “president of intergalactic relations”.

NASA to publish long-awaited UFO report                                    

NASA is set to release on Thursday the findings of a long-awaited study on unexplained flying objects in Earth's skies.

The US space agency announced last year it was reviewing evidence regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs -- which has replaced the term "UFO" in official parlance.

The subject has long fascinated the public but was shunned by mainstream science.

An independent team of 16 researchers shared their preliminary observations in May, finding that existing data and eyewitness reports are insufficient to draw firm conclusions, while calling for more systematic collection of high-quality data.

It's unlikely Thursday's report will change that bottom line -- but it could eventually usher in the start of a new mission for the agency.

While NASA's probes and rovers scour the solar system for any fossils of ancient microbes, and its astronomers look for signs of intelligent civilizations on distant planets, its historic posture has been to "debunk" sightings on our home planet.

There have been more than 800 "events" collected over 27 years, of which two to five percent are thought to be possibly anomalous, the report's authors said during the May meeting.

These are defined as "anything that is not readily understandable by the operator or the sensor," or "something that is doing something weird," said team member Nadia Drake.

The US government has begun taking the issue of UAPs more seriously in recent years, in part due to concerns that they are related to foreign surveillance.

NASA's work, which relies on unclassified material, is separate from a Pentagon investigation, though the two are coordinating on matters of how to apply scientific tools and methods.

In July, a former US intelligence officer made headlines when he told a congressional committee he "absolutely" believes the government is in possession of unidentified anomalous phenomena -- as well as remains of their alien operators.

"My testimony is based on information I've been given by individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy and service to this country -- many of whom also shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation and classified oral testimony," David Grusch told lawmakers.