THE latest crop circle that appeared in a field at Manton Drove, near Marlborough, last week has been dismissed as a man-made creation.

Experts examining aerial photos of the formation have concluded that there is evidence of human activity from marks made by the wooden boards employed by crop circle makers.

Dr Horace R Drew, writing on the Crop Circle Connector website, claims he has found a foolproof way of working out which formations are of human origin and which may be the work of ‘non-human forces’.

He said: “It is often hard to tell whether a new crop picture might be paranormal or human-made. Recently I found a new method to detect human ‘board marks’ from aerial images, by using a standard Photoshop program to reduce midtone contrast.

“This method allowed for easy detection of regular board marks in several human-made crop pictures from the past, for example the ‘dolphins’ at Golden Ball Hill in July of 2004.

“A crop picture at Manton Drove on June 2, 2012 also shows a series of regularly striped features, which could perhaps be human board marks.”

He added: “Nor was the imagery of this crop picture particularly clever: just a ‘Polar Clock 3’ screensaver that can be downloaded free off the web. The crop picture shows a polar-clock date of Saturday, August 4, sometime in the evening from 6–7pm.

“Would this be something which we might expect our paranormal friends to say?”