Are these the remains of an alien? That's what many people wondered after this mummy was found in the Chilean Atacama desert in 2003. A documentary was produced on the possible extraterrestrial find. But the remains were identified as a human. Researchers believe the 15-centimeter (6-inch) long figure was probably a prematurely born fetus with various bone and cranial deformities.

In 1922 British archeologist Howard Carter discovered the mummy of pharaoh Tutankhamun in an almost untouched tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Experts speculated for decades whether or not the child king had been murdered. Finally, in 2005, a tomographic computer analysis using wave penetration, similar to a CAT scan, proved that he had died from injuries sustained while he hunting.

Rosalia, considered the world's most beautiful mummy, has been resting in a Catholic Capuchin tomb in Palermo, Italy, for almost 100 years. She died of the Spanish flu shortly before her second birthday. The little girl seems to be simply sleeping. It's not known how her embalmer managed to preserve her so well. All that's known is that Alfredo Salafia used formaldehyde.

Palermo not only houses the world's most beautiful mummy but also a rather eerie collection of skeletons: The remains of rich people buried in their cloths can be found in the Capuchin cloister's catacombs. In roughly 1600, the religious order's friars discovered that the corpses had only partially decomposed. The friars then arranged them along the walls, where they can now be viewed by tourists.

In 1991 a couple from Nuremberg discovered a glacier mummy while hiking in the Alps around the valley of Ötz, hence the name "Ötzi." In 2000 researchers tried to clarify the cause of death of this Neolithic man, whose remains had been naturally preserved by extreme cold temperatures. The man is thought to have died between 3359 and 3105 B.C. from an arrow attack.

In 2003 an international research team discovered mummies of Scythian warriors in Mongolia. They are only half as old as Ötzi. These Indo-European nomads lived in the vast steppes of Eurasia. This mummy, preserved by ice, was dressed in groundhog fur and wore felt boots.

This bog man, discovered by a peat digger in Neu Versen in 1900, remains the most famous example of a total of 60 bog men that have been discovered in Lower Saxony to date. Over the course of 1,700 years, substances contained in the bog colored the mummy's hair red, hence the nickname "Red Franz." The bog's soil acids preserved his body.

Although this mummy of a baby was found in Peru, it has been named after the Lippisches Landesmuseum in Detmold, North Rhine-Westphalia, which received it for conservation purposes in 1987. The baby, which died of a heart defect, is one of the world's oldest mummies: at around 6,500 years old, it's even older than Tutankhamun and Ötzi.