A mysterious silver monolith has been discovered by a sheep-counting helicopter crew in Utah. The discovery left the crew baffled, the Utah Department of Public Safety said.

The helicopter crew was assisting Utah Division of Wildlife Resource officers as they counted bighorn sheep on Wednesday (18 November) when one of the crew spotted something out of place among the remote terrain below.

“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 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!'”

Bret obliged and turned the chopper around so the team could inspect the strange silver cylinder jutting out of the red rocky ground.

“I’d say it’s probably between 10 and 12 feet-high,” Bret said.

“We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it.”

The crew was able to ascertain that it was very firmly planted, deep in the ground.

“That’s been about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying,” he said.

Watch the report below:

The @UtahDPS helicopter was assisting the @UtahDWR in counting bighorn sheep in remote southern Utah Wednesday when the crew encountered something entirely ‘out of this world’…@KSL5TV #KSLTV #Utah

Photojournalist: @Photog_Steve5 pic.twitter.com/f8P0fayDIS

— Andrew Adams (@AndrewAdamsKSL) November 21, 2020