Las Vegas: The strange monolith looks like it could have come from another world.

Jutting out of the rocks in a remote mountain range near Las Vegas, the glimmering rectangular prism’s reflective surface imitates the vast desert landscape surrounding the mountain peak where it has been erected.

But where did the object come from, and is it still there? That’s a mystery the US Fish and Wildlife Service said it was trying to solve after learning about it through a social media post this week.

Las Vegas police said on the social platform X that members of its search and rescue unit had found the otherworldly object at the weekend near Gass Peak, part of the vast Desert National Wildlife Refuge, where bighorn sheep and desert tortoises can be found roaming. At 2114 metres, it is among the highest peaks in the area north of Las Vegas.

“We see a lot of weird things when people go hiking, like not being prepared for the weather, not bringing enough water,” the police department wrote. “But check this out!”

Photos accompanying the department’s post show the strange structure standing tall against a bright blue sky, with distant views of the Las Vegas valley. It evokes the object that appears in the Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Neither the police department nor its search and rescue unit immediately responded to requests for more information about the discovery – the latest in a series of mysterious shiny columns popping up around the globe since at least 2020.

In November of that year, a similar metal monolith was found deep in the Mars-like landscape of Utah’s red-rock desert. Then came sightings in Romania, central California and on the famed Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas.