Mystery metal pillar found in US desert ‘disappears’
- A shiny, triangular pillar which protruded some 3.7 metres from the red rocks of southern Utah was spotted on November 18 by baffled local officials
- The Bureau of Land Management in Utah said on Saturday it had received ‘credible reports’ that the object had been removed ‘by an unknown party’
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The Bureau of Land Management in Utah said on Saturday it had received “credible reports” that the object had been removed “by an unknown party” on Friday evening.
The bureau “did not remove the structure which is considered private property,” it said in a statement.
“We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office.”
After landing their helicopter to investigate, Utah Department of Public Safety crew members found “a metal monolith installed in the ground” but “no obvious indication of who might have put the monolith there”.
News of the discovery quickly went viral, with many noting the object’s similarity with strange alien monoliths that trigger huge leaps in human progress in Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Although officials had refused to disclose the object’s location out of fear that hordes of curious sightseers would flock to the remote wilderness, some explorers had been able to track it down.
Some observers pointed out the object’s resemblance to the avant-garde work of John McCracken, a US artist who lived for a time in nearby New Mexico, and died in 2011.
