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LOS ANGELES (AFP) – A mysterious metal monolith found in the remote desert of the western United States, which sparked a national guessing game as to how it got there, has apparently disappeared, authorities said Saturday (November 28).
The Utah Bureau of Land Management said it had received credible reports that the object had been removed “by an unknown party” on Friday night.
The office “did not remove the structure that is considered private property,” it said in a statement.
“We do not investigate crimes related to private property that are handled by the local sheriff’s office.”
The bright triangular pillar protruding some 3.7 m from the red rocks of southern Utah was discovered on November 18 by puzzled local officials counting bighorn sheep from the air.
After landing their helicopter to investigate, crew members from the Utah Department of Public Safety found “a metal monolith installed on the ground,” but “no obvious indication of who could have put the monolith there.”
News of the discovery quickly went viral, with many noting the object’s similarity to strange alien monoliths that unleashed huge advances in human progress in Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Although officials had refused to reveal the location of the object for fear that hordes of curious tourists would flock to the remote desert, some explorers had been able to track it down.
Some observers noted 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.
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