Credit: Utah Department of Public Safety
(CNN) -
What began as a routine wildlife assistance operation took an alien turn after Utah Department of Public Safety agents stumbled upon a mysterious monolith in the middle of rural Utah.
Agents from the Aero Bureau unit of the Utah Department of Public Safety were flying in a helicopter last Wednesday, in support of the Division of Wildlife Resources to report the existence of bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah, when they saw something that looked like taken from "2001: A Space Odyssey".
"One of the biologists ... saw it and we happened to fly directly over it," pilot Bret Hutchings told CNN affiliate KSL.
"He was like, 'Wait, wait, wait, turn around, turn around!'
And I was like, 'What?'
And he says, 'There's one thing back there, we have to go see it!'
Credit: Utah Department of Public Safety
And there it was.
In the middle of the red rock was a monolith of shiny silver metal sticking out of the ground.
Hutchings calculated that it was between 3 and 3.5 meters tall.
It didn't look like it had randomly fallen to the ground, he told KSL, but instead looked like it had been planted.
"We joked that if one of us suddenly disappeared, the rest of us would run away," Hutchings said.
Still, Hutchings said he thinks it was most likely placed there by an artist rather than an alien.
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"I guess he's a new wave artist or something or, you know, someone who was a huge fan (of '2001: A Space Odyssey')," he said, referring to a scene from the 1968 movie in which a black monolith appears.
However, it is illegal to install unauthorized structures or art on public land "no matter what planet it is from," the Utah Department of Public Safety said in a statement Monday.
The location of the monolith has not been disclosed and it is not yet clear who, or what, placed it there, the department said.
On Monday, the Bureau of Land Management would decide whether a more extensive investigation is necessary.
Monoliths