For over a century, shapeless masses of flesh with no bones and no eyes have washed ashore and been mistaken for giant octopuses and hairy sea beasts. DNA finally read the label.

A newspaper sensation, a toy submarine, a fleet of sonar boats and a survey of the water's own DNA. Strip away the hoaxes and what is really left in Loch Ness?

A spiny alien that drained goats of their blood terrified Puerto Rico, then all of Latin America. The trail led back to a horror film and a mangy coyote.

For centuries the Himalayas held out a giant with a human tread. Then geneticists asked the hair, the bones and the monastery relics to speak for themselves.

In August 1848 the officers of a British frigate watched a sixty-foot serpent glide past in broad daylight. Their captain reported it to the Admiralty and never backed down.

In 1938 a curator picked a steel-blue fish out of a South African trawler's catch. It belonged to a lineage the world had buried with the dinosaurs, and it turned out not to be alone.

Sailors swore a tentacled monster could drag ships under. Naturalists laughed. Then the carcasses started washing ashore, and cameras finally caught it alive in the deep.