There's a New T-Rex in Town

I usually believe the discovery of a new species to be cause for celebration.

I'm not so sure this time...

In fact, I’m fairly certain that I would have been happier never knowing this animal existed.

An enormous-toothed leech was pulled from the nose of a Peruvian girl bathing in the Upper Amazon river. The original report can be found in the journal PLoS ONE. The leech, named Tyrannobdella rex (translated to “tyrant leech king,”) is less than two inches long, but it supports “ferociously large teeth” in its single jaw.

(Image Credit: Phillips, et al. PLoS ONE 2010)

This find adds to some of the 700 known species of leeches, which exist worldwide. Because the range of the species is so vast, scientists believe that a common ancestor existed on Pangaea, the prehistoric super-continent that existed before modern continents broke apart. The Tyrannobdella rex find will lead to the revising of the leech family that feeds from the body orifices of mammals.

Anna Phillips, a graduate student and first author of the paper believes “the leech could feed on aquatic mammals, from their noses and mouths for example, where they could stay for weeks at a time.”

Mark Siddall, a collaborator on the story and curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History explained that they “…named it Tyrannobdella rex because of its enormous teeth.”

So use caution if you’re ever swimming in the Upper Amazon, you don’t want one of these toothy fiends to latch themselves up your nose.

Siddall added this amusing insight: “Besides, the earliest species in this family of these leeches no-doubt shared an environment with dinosaurs about 200 million years ago when some ancestor of our T. rex may have been up that other T. rex's nose.”

Not to insult the king of the dinosaurs, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather face him any day... at least he couldn't live undetected in my body for months at a time.

Plus, facing an extinct organism is far less frightening than finding out a toothy beast has taken hold of your sinuses for its dinner.