A mysterious monolith in the middle of a rural field in Utah found by officials with the Department of Public Safety has gone missing, the state Bureau of Land Management said Saturday.
The tall, silver, shiny metal monolith was spotted by a team of officers flying in a helicopter helping the wildlife division count bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah. The team turned the helicopter around and inspected it, pilot Bret Hutchings said the structure was between 10 and 12 feet tall. It also didn’t look like it had been dropped randomly, but rather that it had been deliberately placed there.
The Bureau of Land Management released an official statement on Saturday saying the structure was possibly removed by an “unknown party” on Friday night.
“We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, known as the ‘monolith,’ has been removed” from BLM’s public lands. The BLM did not remove the structure, which is considered private property. “
The publication added: “We do not investigate crimes related to private property that are handled by the local sheriff’s office. The structure has received international and national attention and we received reports that a person or group removed it on the night of November 27.”
The local administration had not disclosed the actual location of the structure, fearing that adventurers might set out to search for it in the middle of Redrock Canyon, which is generally remote and difficult to access. However, some tourists had already searched for the structure and visited it before it disappeared on Friday.
The discovery of the structure has caused a lot of excitement among adventure seekers and sparked theories ranging from aliens to everything. However, Bret had guessed that the metal monolith was likely placed by an artist rather than an alien. He had said he must be a new wave artist or someone who was a huge fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
David Surber, who was probably one of the first people to see it in person, later told CNN that “at the end of the day, alien or made through artistic expression; the monolith provided an opportunity for thousands of people to join something positive again.
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