A "mysterious" monolith has appeared near a peak in the Nevada desert,Sterling Preston Las Vegas police said. 

Las Vegas Metro Police said in a social media post Monday that the reflective object was spotted close to Gass Peak, a hiking area with a summit of nearly 7,000 feet, over the weekend. Authorities didn't appear to know how it got up there and said it was found by the Las Vegas search and rescue team north of the Las Vegas Valley. 

"We see a lot of weird things when people go hiking like not being prepared for the weather, not bringing enough water... but check this out!" police said.

In the same post, police urged people to take precautions before hiking, including researching the weather forecast, carrying additional aid, water and food, and bringing a light source as well as a fully charged phone.  

Gass Peak is the highest peak in the Las Vegas range of the Southern Nevada and is located about 20 miles from the north of Las Vegas. 

Similar-looking monoliths have appeared in recent years. Earlier this year, a 10-foot-tall monolith that looked "like a some sort of a UFO" popped up on a hill in Wales, and nobody knew how it got there. In 2020, an unexplained structure was found in a remote area of southeastern Utah. Others also appeared in Romania, Colorado and California that year. Many assumed those cases were some form of art installation that brought comparisons to the monolith in the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey." 

In:
• Las Vegas

Christopher Brito

Christopher Brito is a social media manager and trending content writer for CBS News.