Utah monolith: Mysterious alien-like shiny metal box found in Utah desert by helicopter crew

They were on a mission to count sheep when they found something they had not counted on.

As a Utah helicopter crew buzzed over the southeastern part of the state looking for big horn sheep last week, sitting beneath them in the middle of the desert was a bright shiny monolith, the stuff of sci-fi sagas.

Pilot Bret Hutchings of the state Department of Public Safety recalled someone on board spotting the gleaming metal object firmly implanted in a small clearing set against the redness of the rocks and sand below.

"He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around," Hutchings told KSL-TV in Salt Lake City. "There's this thing, there's this thing back there. We've got to go look at it."

After Hutchings set their helicopter down in the remote area, which remains undisclosed to discourage a rush of gawkers, they got a closer look, but found "no obvious indication" of how it got there, the public safety department said.

Images released by the department show the monolith coming up to the shoulders of a man standing on the shoulders of another after the discovery last Wednesday.

Hutchings joked about the object's possible other-worldly origins and the obvious parallel to the classic 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, but thought the answer was more down to Earth.