'Leave no trace': Photographer captures removal of mysterious Utah monolith

The Utah monolith that inspired a host of conspiracy theories and various Reddit threads from science fiction enthusiasts disappeared almost as quickly as it rose to internet fame — and one photographer watched it happen.

The monolith, a three-sided statue made of metal with no engravings or writing of any kind, was seemingly first discovered on Nov. 18 while surveyors studied populations of bighorn sheep, according to the New York Times. It is unclear when exactly the work was installed, but Reddit users who discovered the coordinates of the monolith used Google Earth photo archives to determine that it appeared somewhere between 2015 and 2016.