Fishy origin of bizarre fossil 'monster'

By Helen Briggs BBC News

Scientists say a worm-like fossil with mysterious origins is actually the ancestor of living fish.
The 300 million-year-old animal was found at an Illinois mine in 1958 by fossil collector Francis Tully.
The "Tully monster" has been a puzzle to scientists ever since, and has been likened to worms and molluscs.
US researchers say the fossil is a backboned animal rather than an invertebrate as once thought, based on an analysis of 1,000 museum specimens.
Their findings, published in Nature, place it firmly on the tree of life of vertebrates and related to fish such as lamprey and hagfish.
It has a rudimentary backbone, which has been misinterpreted in the past as a trace of gut, said Victoria McCoy of Yale University.
"The Tully Monster is very weird looking but we found it is related to modern lamprey," she told BBC News.

see rest here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35821829

It rather puts paid to Holiday's theory of the Loch Ness creature being a giant tully monster as he said it was invertebrate.A bit about his theory here:
http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/great-orm-of-loch-ness.html