Another monolith - this time a huge wooden penis statue in Germany - has vanished

• Another mysterious phallic object vanished, this time in Germany.
• The nationally known "penis statue," which appeared on the Grünten mountain four years ago, was chopped down over the weekend.
• The police are investigating but say it is unclear whether a crime has been committed.
• A day after the statue disappeared, another phallic statue appeared in its place.

Days after a towering penis statue that had been perched on the Grünten mountain in Germany vanished, another penis was erected in its place, the Associated Press reported.

The Grünten penis, which has been a magnet for tourists and dubbed a cultural landmark by Google, mysteriously appeared about four years ago.

It toppled a few weeks ago but was resurrected, according to the local Allgauer Zeitung newspaper.

Over the weekend, however - amid a week of metal monoliths of unknown origins popping up and then disappearing - the statue of giant male genitalia was chopped down and removed.

Because there is no injured party, the police in the Bavarian town of Kempten told Allgauer Zeitung that it's not clear whether a crime had been committed but that the department was investigating anyway.

Days later, though, the German news agency Deutsche Press-Agentur reported Thursday that an even larger penis appeared in the same spot. This one was held up by wooden beams.

Penis statue's disappearance comes amid strange monolith news

Last week a 12-foot-high metal monolith was found by a state helicopter crew in a remote area on federal land in Utah. It vanished November 27, shortly after the news of its existence was reported.

The same day the first mysterious structure vanished, a second, similar metal monolith appeared on a hilltop near Piatra Neamt, Romania. It disappeared two days later.

On Wednesday, a third metal slab appeared atop Pine Mountain in Atascadero, California. The 10-foot-tall, stainless-steel monolith matched the Utah and Romania statues, but unlike those it was not firmly attached to the ground.

Insider's Aylin Woodward examined Google Earth data and found that the Utah monolith first appeared sometime between August 2015 and October 2016. Equivalent satellite imagery to establish whether the Romania and California monoliths were around before their recent discoveries was not available.

Like the penis statues, the origin of the metal monolith remains unknown.

The metal structures have been compared to the giant slab from an iconic scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

• Read more:
• The metal monolith recently documented in the Utah desert has been there since 2016
• A mysterious metal monolith was found in Romania on the same day a similar one vanished in Utah
• A 3rd metal monolith has appeared in California - it's almost an exact match to the 2 monoliths that disappeared in Utah and Romania