THESE BEES BED
DOWN IN BLOOMS
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE NEELYWhere globe mallow
plants bloom in the
western United States,
you’ll often find a spe-
cies of bee that shares
the plant’s name and
taps it for food. Nature
photographers Joe and
Niccole Neely were
walking in an Arizona
field when they saw
the bees’ other use for
the blooms: as crash
pads. Globe mallowbees don’t make hives;
females sleep in ground
nests, males on plants.
Near sunset, the Neelys
saw bees enter one
flower after another.
“They’d just kind of
crawl in and plop over,”
Joe says. And when one
more bee alighted and
saw all blooms occu-
pied, it converted a
single into a double.
—PATRICIA EDMONDSEXPLORE | CAPTURED
ILLUSTRATION: CHUANG ZHAO. PHOTOS (FROM TOP): ROBBIE SHDISPATCHES
FROM THE FRONT LINES
OF SCIENCE
AND INNOVATIONNEARLY 90 YEARS AFTER it was hidden
doned well, a stunningly preserved skull i
The artifact may represent a new human
“dragon man” (reconstruction above). At l
cranium sports a mash-up of ancient and m
it’s closely related to us—even more so t
researchers say. “I’ve held a lot of other hu
never like this,” says study co-author Xijun
at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Y
debate, with some experts suggesting it
mysterious Neanderthal sister group rep
No matter its identity, the skull undersc
branches are in our human family tree.PALEOANTHROPOLOGYWHO WAS ‘DRAG
AN UNEARTHED SKULL FROM MO
YEARS AGO MAY REPRESENT A N