Scissorheads

More "fenestrated filter feeders." The idea here is similar to the Combills, but with a more "scissoring"-style jaw arrangement. The mechanics of feeding are also a little different in these guys. Organic material is collected on the ridged sieve plates, but instead of being "squeezed off" by a surrounding contractile sphincter and absorbed into mucous membranes, food is "brushed" off by the stiff, baleen-like hairs of the complementary mandible and sucked, vacuum-like, into a food intake tube.

The fellow on the middle left shows how the upper and lower mandibles serve a dual purpose as both "collectors" and "scrapers." In this arrangement, intake tubes are located in both the upper and lower mandibles rather than between the mandibles as in terrestrial vertebrates. The smaller study below shows how this style of "scissors" would look in their closed position. The "baleen" bristles have been omitted for clarity.

These guys could live a lifestyle similar to manatees, whales, hippos, or flamingos; I don’t really have any preconceptions about them, though I guess I did picture them being larger animals than the Combills. There's no consistency between the optical configurations because I don't really have a defined morphological template or evolutionary background for these creatures; I was just playing with the visual aspects of their design at this point.