'Dead alien' turns out to be stale bread Students behind the discovery of an alien's body at a UFO crash site have admitted it was a hoax - made out of stale bread.

A video of the find shot by Timur Hilall, 18, and Kirill Vlasov, 19 - supposedly showing the alien's mangled body frozen in snow in  Irkutsk, Siberia -  became a world-wide sensation after appearing on YouTube.

Now the pair have admitted it was a prank after being quizzed  by police over the stunt.

A Russian interior ministry spokesman said: 'We found the alien in one of the student's homes.

'It was lying under his bed and an examination of it revealed it had been made of bread crumbs which were then covered in chicken skin.' 

Now police and prosecutors are considering whether the pair have committed any crime.

'What are we going to do with them? We have not yet decided.' 

The bogus body appeared after locals reported seeing an alien spaceship crash in the region last month.

Local UFO expert Alex Komanov from the Russian UFO Research Centre immediately dismissed the find saying: 'The body is interesting. The texture is similar to a real biological entity.

'However, the creature has no clothes and I am sure that intelligent beings would be dressed in something like a space suit or coveralls.'

But UFO fans are already accusing the Russian government of staging a cover up.

'We know what we saw. Powerful people in the military just don't want us  to see this,' said one.