A mysterious monolith that bears an uncanny resemblance to the one from popular sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey has been found in the Utah desert.
Authorities who discovered the monolith confirmed it wasn’t merely placed on the ground, but instead was partially buried.
The shiny object was found by government officials, when crew members from the Utah Department of Public Safety and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources were flying through the area in a helicopter.
The monolith appears to be metallic and stands about 10 to 12 feet high.
Public safety crew flying over southeastern Utah desert discover pristine metallic silver colored monolith
A public safety crew flying over southeastern Utah found the “unusual” monolith in the desert.
The metallic structure had no special identification marks and was embedded in the ground. Although the crew didn’t take exact dimensions, they estimated the monolith to be about 10 to 12 feet tall. Considering it was strongly anchored in the desert ground, the monolith’s total height could be higher.
The @UtahDPS helicopter was assisting the @UtahDWR in counting bighorn sheep in remote southern Utah Wednesday when the crew encountered something entirely ‘out of this world’…@KSL5TV #KSLTV #Utah
Photojournalist: @Photog_Steve5 pic.twitter.com/f8P0fayDIS
— Andrew Adams (@AndrewAdamsKSL) November 21, 2020
The Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) confirmed on Monday that Aero Bureau and wildlife resource officers were conducting a count of bighorn sheep last week in Red Rock Country when they chanced upon the unknown shiny object.
The crew landed the helicopter nearby then conducted an unofficial and rather rudimentary examination of the unknown and obviously foreign object.
Is the mysterious metal ‘obelisk’ in the Utah Desert an art installation?
As there are no identification marks, the DPS crew was unable to figure out who had placed the monolith in the middle of the Utah desert. The location of the monolith is extremely remote, according to one of the crew members. Incidentally, none from the initial survey team has offered any information about the exact whereabouts of the object.
#UtahMonolith Update: The monument appears nearly identical to minimalist work by the late John McCracken 1934-2011. #monolith #unsolvedmysteries pic.twitter.com/gKfnor6BW8
— Austin Grant (@AustinBGrant) November 24, 2020
Officials have kept the monolith’s exact location a secret to prevent people from traveling out into the desert. However, this hasn’t stopped several internet users from going on a virtual hunt trying to geolocate the “obelisk” using surrounding rock formations as markers on Google Earth.
4chan has discovered the location of the Utah monolith. It sat there for over 4 years unnoticed. pic.twitter.com/me50ib6Xsg
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 24, 2020
Despite its barren appearance, the Utah desert is an ecological heaven for many species. One of the species that call the desert home is the bighorn sheep, which gets its name because of its large horn. One of the subspecies of the sheep has become endangered in recent years. It is likely the crew was trying to get a rough estimate of the sheep’s numbers via an aerial survey.