The mysterious monolith that appeared in the Nevada desert has been removed, years after similar mystifying, gleaming objects first appeared in the deserts of Utah during the Covid-19 pandemic and captured the world’s imagination.
Las Vegas police announced the discovery of the monolith – an art installation – at Gass Peak, roughly 40 miles (64.4km) north of the city, on Monday.
“MYSTERIOUS MONOLITH!” a police department post on X said. “We see a lot of weird things when people go hiking like not being prepared for the weather, not bringing enough water… but check this out! Over the weekend, [police] spotted this mysterious monolith near Gass Peak north of the valley.”
The monolith was taken down Thursday afternoon, the police said in an update on Friday, citing “public safety and environmental concerns”. They said it would be stored at an undisclosed location while authorities determine how to dispose of or store the reflective 10ft-tall (3 meters) metal prism.
“It remains unknown how the item got to its location or who might be responsible,” police said. “At this time, there is no [police] investigation into the object or the circumstances surrounding its existence.”
Similar versions of the monolith spotted in Utah, California, Wales and Romania in 2020 sparked conspiracy theories involving aliens – or that the appearance of the structures was an elaborate, highly coordinated prank.
The structures bear a resemblance to the one that is featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The first monolith was discovered by accident in 2020 when wildlife officials were counting bighorn sheep from a helicopter in a desert near Moab, Utah. The object soon attracted hundreds of curious onlookers to its location as its fame spread around the globe. Shortly after it was found, that monolith mysteriously disappeared.
Within a short time, a spate of monoliths appeared around the world and quickly vanished – one near an archaeological site outside the Romanian city of Piatra Neamt, another that appeared atop a mountain in central California, and one in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Earlier this year, a monolith was spotted by walkers at the summit of Hay Bluff hill in Powys, Wales. “I was a bit taken aback as it looked like some sort of a UFO,” Craig Muir told PA media at the time.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
