Transfercase Skid Plate??

So, after crunching through some gravel today (and denting my front skids earlier this week), I crawled under the truck to for a quick damage check. To my surprise, I saw that my transfercase has a very small black plate bolted to the bottom of it. Kind of like a mini skid plate. My '09, which, except for the manual transmission, was identically equipped and did not have this plate. Is this new for 2010? Or specific to the automatic trans? Or was my '09 missing stuff?

 

i have n 09 4x4 auto and i gave it

 

your 09 was missing stuff.

 

Awesome. Poor little truck must have been built on a Friday afternoon; it had all kinds of weird ailments.

So is this plate intended to protect the T-case?

 

I have one on my 09 auto TRD OR

 

Let me get this straight, you traded in an 09 for a '10? What gives?

 

No, Toyota took it back under a Lemon Law warranty claim. I loved that truck, but it had issues that they could not fix after many multiple repair attempts.