Description

Palaega sp.
Upper Cretaceous
Northumberland Fm., Nanaimo Group
Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada

37mm isopod in 84mm concretion. Extremely rare. May be the only known specimen. We have extremely good collection and locality data on this specimen, easily enough for publication so you can be the first to describe it in the scientific literature.

This creature is a marine isopod, a type of parasite that plagues the fish of modern oceans and has been the nemesis of fish since at least the Cretaceous. Fossils of them are extremely rare.

The living parasitic isopod Cymotha has a particularly horrific lifecycle. It migrates into the gills of a fish, then attaches itself to the fishes tongue via specialized claws. It then taps the blood supply of the tongue, causing the tongue to wither away. From then on, it acts as the tongue of the fish, living permanently in the mouth of the fish! Ugh!

If you can’t resist, read more about this horrible parasite: Cymotha – the tongue-eating isopod