TYRANT LEECH KING

The Tyrannobdella rex, or 'tyrant leech king' in Latin, was discovered in the nose of a Peruvian child by physician Physician Renzo Arauco-Brown. The girl's parents had sought help after the child – who is thought to have regularly swam in Peru's tropical rivers and lakes – complained of feeling a sliding sensation in her nose.

Scientists have classified the 2-inch creature as a new species and believe it may have infested the noses of other animals, possibly including dinosaurs. “Some ancestor of our T. rex may have been up that other T. Rex's nose,” said Mark Siddall, one of the from the American Museum of Natural History in New York researchers who anaylysed the creature.

The animal, which was described in the research journal PLoS One, only has one jaw, with teeth about the width of a human hair.

"It uses [its jaw] like a saw. It doesn't need a huge wound because it has incredible suction power," Mr Siddall said. “We named it Tyrannobdella rex because of its enormous teeth," he added.

"Besides, the earliest species in this family of these leeches no doubt shared an environment with dinosaurs about 200 million years ago. "The new T. rex joins four other species that use this abbreviated name, including two Miocene fossils [a snail and a scarab beetle], a living Malaysian formicid ant, and, of course, the infamous Cretaceous theropod dinosaur that was described in 1905 by an earlier curator of the American Museum of Natural History."