A photographic tour through our years of obsession with mysterious, hard-to-find or mythical animals.

Rabid dog? Fanged turtle? Resurrected dinosaur? The creature that allegedly washed ashore in eastern Long Island, N.Y., in late July 2008 caused a flurry of speculation as to where it came from and what the heck it was.  Photographs of the "Montauk Monster" made the rounds in the blogosphere, and even got attention on CNN and Fox News.  Not to be outdone, Bigfoot jumped back into the headlines two weeks later, when a pair of hunters claimed to discover one of the mythical apemen in northern Georgia (the Southern state, not the country in Eastern Europe). The human obsession with Bigfoot, the Montauk Monster, and other mysterious or unidentified animals, also known as "cryptids," as well as with those long extinct, is nothing new.  We've been on their trail for centuries.  Click through a tour of our all-time favorites: