Utah officials on a routine wildlife operation last week were mystified when they discovered a strange, alien-like monolith standing inexplicably in the middle of the desert.
Photographs of the mysterious metal object show a sleek 10- to 12-foot upright rectangle, similar to the anomaly that appeared in the opening scene of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Officials are withholding the exact location of the object fearing that people might get lost or stranded trying to find it and need to be rescued, according to The Associated Press.
So far authorities have struggled to explain how it came to rest in the remote stretches of southeastern Utah.
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“This thing is not from another world,” said Lt. Nick Street of the Utah Highway Patrol, part of the Department of Public Safety.
There are no apparent inscriptions or signatures on the embedded piece of metal, deepening the mystery.
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From a helicopter last Wednesday, members of the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau and the Division of Wildlife Resources were counting bighorn sheep when they spotted the shiny pillar jutting from the ground amid the clay-colored landscape, according to CNN.
“One of the biologists ... spotted it, and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it,” pilot Bret Hutchings told CNN affiliate KSL. “He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘What.’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there — we’ve got to go look at it!’”
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The crew, which landed and took photographs to document the find, had a bit of fun speculating whether the object had been placed at the site by an artist or an alien lifeform.
“We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it,” Hutchings said. “I’m assuming it’s some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big (”2001: A Space Odyssey”) fan,” he said.
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Installing art on Utah public land requires proper authorization but is otherwise illegal “no matter what planet you’re from,” the Utah public safety department quipped in a Monday statement.
The federal Bureau of Land Management was apparently weighing whether to further investigate the matter, reports said.
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