The 20 cm long object, comprised of 90 percent aluminum, appears to have been shaped by tools, sparking speculation it arrived on Earth with extraterrestrials, according to the Mirror.

“Lab tests concluded it is an old UFO fragment, given the substances it comprises cannot be combined with technology available on Earth,” said Gheorghe Cohal from the Romanian Ufologists Association.

The object was discovered in 1973 in the Mures River in the city of Aiud. Alongside it were two large bones belonging to extinct mammals believed to have died between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago.

Romanian officials dated the aluminum object as 250,000 years old, a result later confirmed by a lab in Switzerland, according to the Daily Star.

A Reddit thread revealed some even go a step further in theorizing the origins of the object, believing it was left behind by a time traveler after they encountered some angry mastodons.

Some experts have questioned the 250,000 year determination, speculating it to be between 400 and 80,000 years old, but even so, it’s still much too early for mankind to produce aluminum.

Historian Mihai Wittenberger has dismissed the age estimate completely, claiming it belongs to a German World War 2 aircraft.

However, all the theories may be wrong, with a more likely explanation being that it is simply part of an excavator used in the original unearthing of the site, with the ageing tests completely wrong.

Either way, aliens have yet to call back looking for their missing piece of aluminum.

Source: RT.com