Law enforcement officers in Utah are scratching their heads after finding a metal monolith sticking out of the ground in a remote part of the state.
While they're assuming it's manmade, it didn't take long for suggestions of aliens to be made.
Wildlife staff from the Utah Department of Public Safety were in a helicopter counting bighorn sheep last week when they came across the curious find.
"One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it," pilot Bret Hutchings told local news station KSL-TV.
"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!'"
Inside a cove they found the 3m-high metallic monolith, just sitting there.
"We were, like, thinking is this something NASA stuck up there or something. Are they bouncing satellites off it or something?"
The department uploaded photos of it to Instagram and Facebook.
"We came across this, in the middle of nowhere, buried deep in the rock. Inquiring minds want to know, what the heck is it? Anyone?"
In Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Arthur C Clarke book it's based on, the monoliths are placed by a super-advanced alien species to assist lesser races in their evolution.
While the arrival of a super-intelligent alien species might not surprise anyone in 2020, there's no indication that's the case here.
"I'm assuming it's some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big [2001: A Space Odyssey] fan," said Hutchings. "That's been about the strangest thing that I've come across out there in all my years of flying."
Perhaps against their better judgment, Department of Public Safety crew stood on each other's shoulders to get a better look at it - showing just how big it is.
"We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it," Hutchings told KSL-TV.
