Evolution

Book recommendations from the editors of Scientific American 

As Hurricane Dorian approaches Florida, consider that feeding style means that aggressive tangle-web spider colonies produce more offspring after severe weather, while docile colonies do better in calm conditions.

An ancient cranium discovered in Ethiopia suggests the early hominin evolutionary tree is messier than we thought

Fossil poop reveals that some Jurassic pterosaurs were filter feeders

Bones found in Morocco underscore that many more dinosaurs await discovery.

Microbes in flowers are crucial to bee diets, and microbiome changes could be starving the insects

A fossil uncovered in the 1970s turns out to be a previously unknown species

Researchers slowed the approach of greedy gulls by an average of 21 seconds by staring at the birds versus looking elsewhere. Christopher Intagliata reports.

A new hadrosaur from Texas has a striking, shovel-shaped mouth

A gaping hole in the Juan de Fuca plate could explain why central Oregon has volcanoes

By killing off many of New Zealand’s endemic birds, humans destroyed 50 million years’ worth of evolutionary history. Christopher Intagliata reports. 

Everyday Einstein looks at two new studies that blame volcanoes and asteroids