A Dream for Discussing

This my have been a bad title, but I just woke up and dont feel like trying to create a better one.

ANYWAYS the purpose of this one is to recall a dream I had during the night that made me glad to be in evolutionary bio.

So it starts off at the beach along the, what I believe Mediterranean sea oddly enough (the name of the body was said at one point, but I cant remember it), and people from high school and middle school were all there. One guy from middle school became some fashion model (something along those lines) and so there was a photographer going around everywhere taking his picture. I specifically remember two girls from high school also being there and we were talking for a bit. There's the set up.

Beach looked more like this with a few bushes

A few minutes pass and the tide starts to move in, so everyone goes swimming. These waves got decent sized (compared to what I've seen) like 10 feet swells. It was very enjoyable, the water was not too cold surprisingly.

Then we notice a larger wave coming by, I'm guessing around 20 feet. So of course I go for it (note: I'm just swimming, no board). Just before I hit it, I turn and start swimming as fast as I can to keep up with it and start gliding on it. AND I DID! IT WAS FANTASTIC! Then it started slowing down as it was breaking under the water, and I started falling in mid air, but I wasn't really scared until I noticed something under the water as I'm falling towards it.

Anomalocaris

Under the water all I thought it was was just some rock, so naturally I'm afraid I'm going to hit it. When I splash down I don't feel any rock luckily. Thinking I just had a close call I walk back onto land, when I feel something on my leg and quickly shake it off (well it startled me). That's when I see something that I feel came out of the Cambrian time period.What I shake off is this scorpion looking thing, all black, body about the size of a lobster (20 cm long, maybe 10 cm wide, there about), stinging (I assume) tail that is maybe 30 cm long and is in beaded sections, long (40 cm) thin legs that were flattened came out from the side that go from black to red to white at the tips, and claws that are more circular, yet small at the end of maybe 10 cm long arms. (all these measurements are based of the rough size I can remember of it). It was like Anomalocaris crossed with scorpion.

So I had kicked it off my leg onto a pier pillar. It scurries around on the pillar and one of it's claws brushes up against some fisherman's leg, and he jumps up a bit. By this time the creature was on the sand, and this fisherman comes up to it and beats it with a plastic food tray killing it. The finishing blow broke the carapace and out shot a bit of blood that was black.

It is at this point when I sit there looking at it, and thinking of how it could have evolved.... This is why I'm an evolutionary biologist. Based on it's look, I would say descended from scorpions. Had the stinging tail and the claws to back up that conclusion. I don't recall seeing them, but it may have had some web-like structure between it's legs (?) to help it swim, but I don't think there was as the flattening would have provided decent locomotion. These legs looked a lot like the spines from a lion fish to give an idea of what the legs looked like, just fewer of them, I think it was eight. (At this point I wake up, but I'll continue anyways) As I had mentioned, the claws were smaller and more circular. The size could have been because it feed on small fish, larger claws would have been to hard to maneuver around smaller fish. As for the long tail, probably indicates ambush predator. My hypothesis is that it sits on rocks to blend in (recall dark body) and when a fish swims by over head, it would lift it's tail up slowly when the fish is in front and strike quickly down at spine paralyzing the fish. At this point it could swim up to it and start munching away. It was only the one specimen so I couldn't get much on mating or if there were sexual dimorphisms.

My thinking for how it became sea dwelling is that the ancestors were scorpions in the desert or some dried up ancient sea bed not too far from the ocean. Water levels then began to rise, forcing the creature to start living off dead washed up fish, or whatever it could find. Over time it developed a thicker shell to keep out the water and then began it's descent into the sea. Once in the water the tail (metasoma) grew longer to be able to attack fish better with the sting (telson), and the legs  got longer and flatter to help it swim better. I don't know this but having a beaded tail might be stealthier than a tail of consistent thickness. Based on the food source, the claws (chelea) then shrunk for a) better swimming and b) for less clumsy eating. And as previously mentioned, black coloration to blend in. Finally based on the size, I would guess this was an adult.

The ancestor of the creature

Checking for a possible family, I find Scorpionidae (so clever), but also genus Heterometrus. These are forest dwelling scorpions, but humid dwelling. So while original hypothesis gets shot down, new one just places origins in the humid forests near the ocean, and they became more adapted to live in the sea. Just get better at handling humidity to the point where 100% is no issue. This genus is located in tropical and subtropical southeast Asia, (recall I guessed about where I was so this is still plausible) and contains some of the larger scorpion species. Finally not generally lethal to humans.

So what name to give it? That's my question to everyone who reads this. What is the species name? Personally I think that giving it a name based around the fact that it swims would be good, like maybe oceanus or aquarii.