A mysterious monolith that was found in the remote Utah desert has been removed by an ‘unknown party’ after its sudden arrival sparked theories it was left by aliens.
The shiny triangular pillar, which protruded approximately 12 feet from the red rocks in southern Utah, was spotted last Wednesday by baffled local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.
However the three-sided structure was removed by ‘an unknown party’ on Friday evening, the Bureau of Land Management Utah said in a statement.
Tourists have headed to the site following the news of its removal and revealed how the triangular top has been left at the site alongside rocks piled in a stack.
However the BLM said it had not removed the structure ‘which is considered private property’ and would not be investigating because ‘crimes involving private property’ are managed by the local sheriff’s office.
The BLM said in a Facebook post on Saturday: ‘We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the ‘monolith’ has been removed from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands by an unknown party.
‘The BLM did not remove the structure which is considered private property. We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office.
Utah Department of Public Safety said on Monday that crew members found ‘a metal monolith installed in the ground’ but ‘no obvious indication of who might have put the monolith there.’
‘It is illegal to install structures or art without authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you’re from,’ warned the agency in a tongue-in-cheek press release Monday.
News of the discovery quickly went viral online, with many noting the object’s similarity to the strange alien monoliths that trigger huge leaps in human progress in Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’
Meanwhile arguments broke out among residents in Utah after tourists were accused of trashing the location, which authorities had tried to keep secret to avoid people getting lost.
But many tracked down the coordinates and published them – leading people to drive many hours through the night to reach the 12ft aluminium structure.
Several adventurous hikers successfully located the monolith on Tuesday and gleefully climbed the mystifying object and snapped photos with it, even though officials didn’t disclose its exact location for fear people would get lost searching for it.
A similar version appeared nearly 20 years ago on New Years Day in Seattle.
However access to this site involved a 45-minute off-road drive on a dirt track many miles from any major town at 10mph – and then a 15-minute hike up a dry stream bed.
Across the globe UFO spotters and conspiracy theorists became obsessed with the shiny, triangular pillar.
A Reddit user said they had managed to geo-locate the obelisk using surrounding rock formations.
Sharing the Google Earth location – where a small structure can be seen, roughly six miles from the nearest road – the user said the structure was first photographed by Google in 2016.
Some satellite images of the monolith date back to a year earlier in 2015.
Though the structure was only discovered by authorities this month, Google Earth images show it had been standing since at least 2015 or 2016.
Lieutenant Nick Street, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said it’s possible the structure had been there for ’40, 50 years, maybe more.’
‘It’s the type of material that doesn’t degrade with the elements. It may only be a few years old, who knows. There’s no real way based on the material it’s made out of how long it’s actually been there,’ he said on Tuesday.
Some pointed out the object’s resemblance to the avant-garde work of John McCracken, an American artist who lived for a time in nearby New Mexico, and died in 2011.
McCracken was known for his freestanding sculptures in the shape of pyramids, cubes, or sleek slabs.
On social media, others remarked on its discovery during a turbulent year that has seen the world gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic, and optimistically speculated it could have a different function entirely.
‘This is the ‘reset’ button for 2020. Can someone please press it quickly?’ joked one Instagram user.
‘Up close it reads: “Covid vaccine inside”‘ wrote another.
Bret Hutchings, the pilot who happened to fly over the obelisk, speculated that it had been planted by ‘some new wave artist.’
Either way, Hutchings admitted it was ‘about the strangest thing I’ve come across out there, in all my years of flying.’
‘We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it,’ he told a local news station.