Viability of an upper-jaw-only beak?

Say we have an organism with the beak of a raptor (the bird type, not the dinosaur), but instead of a full beak, it only has a mandible on the upper jaw, while the lower jaw just has a jaw bone like that of a dog or human, would this be possible from an evolutionary sense or would the lack of a lower mandible make the beak useless.

If so, how would one make it work? Would it need teeth on it's lower jaw to compensate, or even teeth on the upper and lower jaw? There's a rough illustration below to show how I imagine it in its basest form.

posted almost 8 years ago

ArborianSerpent‭

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