Social media went gaga last week when a mysterious metal structure was discovered in the Utah desert.
Now - just as mysteriously - the strange object is no longer there.
The 12-foot-tall monolith apparently vanished Friday night, according to the state's Bureau of Land Management, citing "credible reports."
"We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure has been removed from the Bureau of Land Management public lands by an unknown party," CNET quoted a BLM statement on Facebook.
The bureau said it did not remove the monolith and that it will not conduct an investigation into its disappearance as it is considered private property.
The shiny object was discovered by Utah's wildlife officials who were helping count bighorn sheep from a helicopter. In an interview with local news channel KSL TV, pilot Bret Hutchings said that the monolith has been "the strangest thing" he has ever seen in the desert in all his years of flying.
In the midst of the discovery, internet sleuths tried to uncover the origins of the structure. First they tracked the thing on Google Earth, then used historical imaging data in a bid to find out exactly when the monolith first appeared in the desert.
Using the collated images, they discovered the object first appeared between August 2015 and October 2016. Sci-fi drama "Westworld" was filming near the spot where the monolith stood around that time - which has led many to theorize the object is just a prop.
The monolith was very similar to the one featured in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey wherein a bunch of apes discovered the eerie-looking metal object in the desert.
Regardless, the monolith has vanished. The BLM said it's now the job of the sheriff's office to find out where it went and who took it.
