Egg-Shaped
- First reported
- April 24, 1964 (Lonnie Zamora's Socorro, New Mexico sighting — the case that gave the shape its name in the American record)
- Peak decade
- 1960s
Composite silhouette from witness reports
Profile
A smooth, symmetrical ovoid — wider than a classic disc but tapered at both ends rather than flat — reported at close range with a matte white or aluminum-colored surface, sometimes bearing a red insignia or marking, and frequently seen landed on tripod-like legs that leave three or four depressions in soil or vegetation. The egg is disproportionately a landing-trace shape: because witnesses tend to encounter it up close and stationary rather than in fast overflight, egg-shaped reports carry an outsized share of ufology's best physical-evidence cases — burn marks, crushed vegetation in a tripod pattern, and localized radiation or magnetic readings at the site afterward. The type's defining case, Socorro 1964, is also one of the rare instances where the shape and its occupants (two small white-suited figures) were reported together by a single trained observer, a police officer, giving investigators an unusually detailed physical description to work from despite the brief encounter.
Skeptical reading
Socorro remains officially 'unidentified' by Project Blue Book despite decades of proposed mundane explanations (a lunar-lander hoax by New Mexico Tech students, a misperceived dust devil, a publicity stunt tied to a local prank feud) — none has been conclusively confirmed, which is itself unusual for a case this thoroughly investigated. Valensole's decade of infertile soil at the landing site is disputed between a genuine unexplained agricultural effect and mundane causes like herbicide runoff or a fungal infestation unrelated to the sighting.