The structure runs under standing colonial buildings on Calle Guatemala in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, and only the portion reachable around them has been exposed. Every published count is a count of that partial exposure and has risen with each season of work. No scholar has proposed a total, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement. The sixteenth-century figures are narrative rather than counts and cannot stand in for one.
What would resolve this Full exposure of the structure, which would require access beneath the buildings above it, together with a minimum-number-of-individuals count taken across the complete assemblage rather than across the reachable part. Short of that, a defensible estimate would need the geometry of the excavated portion projected onto the full plan of the rack, published with its assumptions.
OpenArchaeology and bioarchaeology, with urban heritage engineering for access beneath protected colonial buildings.Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Programa de Arqueologia Urbana: the Huei Tzompantli excavations at the Templo Mayor