In that it seems to be getting fairly heavy elsewhere, here is something lighter:
Is there anything that seagulls don’t eat?, a set of pictures in today’s Guardian.
I should note a couple of things, the pictures are not for the squeamish, and that Betteridge’s Law of Headlines applies…
This made me wonder: People used to have pigs that, along with chickens and other birds, served as a sort of garbage disposable animal that would eat all the leftovers, rotten food, etc. Could we have farmed seagulls to serve the same purpose? Would they even be good to eat? 
Well, pigs are said to be genetically close to humans. So you can keep them in cramped conditions, doing hard manual labour for no pay. Somehow I don’t think gulls will fall for that one 
Humans, pigs, fungi, and a whole profusion of unicellular things (some protozoa) are all members of this branch called Opisthokonta (near the bottom of the image–Hug et al., 2016). So, yes, in the grand scheme of things, quite closely related! Nearly all other branches in the Tree of Life are bacterial, archaeal, or unicellular eukaryotic (aka protozoa or algae). The idea that most of life is either plant or animal is woefully outdated and flat-out wrong.
I am an evolutionary biologist. AMA.
Are seagulls the apex creature?
My vote would probably go to Prochlorococcus marinus (a unicellular cyanobacterium)–incredibly efficient, ubiquitous, abundant, and not too distantly related to the chloroplasts that do photosynthesis in all plant and algal cells.
You could also look here for some candidates: Kevin J. Carpenter: Microbe Worlds | SFO Museum
OK 
Please recommend books that illustrate evolution, but not in a cartoonish way.
Context: my 5 yo daughter is fascinated by the whole topic, how wolves are the ancestors of dogs and birds descended from dinosaurs. But she wants to see the details.
Books for children about evolution (that I could find) are just cartoonish drawings. These she finds uninteresting. I have been downloading papers which have illustrated phylogenic trees and fossils, but this is not my area of expertise. Eg one paper which illustrated the evolution of feathers based on fossil evidence, with a ton of drawings, was a great success, we keep rereading it.
I am looking for a book that has “grown-up” illustrations of the evolutionary process. I understand that these are artists’ conceptions based on fossils etc, but at least they have some evidence behind them.
Not who was asked but I’d like to recommend The Ancestor’s Tale. I’m not around children a lot so I don’t know the capabilities of a 5 year old, but with some adult accompaniment I’d say it’s a good book, even if a bit too dense for a child.
Either way the recommendation stands because it’s exactly what you asked, it follows a “backwards” trend through evolution, by looking at the common ancestors of various life forms. If not for now, maybe in 5 years time it’ll be a good read for her.
Sorry, I really don’t know anything about books for this age group, but I would advise you continue looking in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, as some papers have surprisingly good illustrations. Although the literature is difficult for non-specialists, you should be able to glean some of the main points through reading the abstract, intro, and discussion–even if much of the info in Materials and Methods are unfamiliar.
Images of unfamiliar organisms, even without much in the way of written content may also spark imagination. I advise you find a copy of Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms of Nature and have a look with your daughter at the spectacular foraminifera, radiolaria, alongside his highly artistic renderings of more familiar creatures (plants, animals). Photographically speaking, I am a big fan of Anna Atkins’ early images (photograms) of algae and Karl Blossfeldt’s images of plants. The story of algae is a fascinating and highly convoluted one. Cyanobacteria (aka Blue-green algae) have been called the most important organisms ever to have evolved. WIthout them, we would have no oxygen in the atmosphere, no ozone layer, no life on land, no animals, plants, fungi, etc. The iron and copper they precipitated formed the basis of the Iron Age and Bronze age, They are also the ultimate source of photosynthesis in all organisms that carry out this process. This is because chloroplasts ultimately were evolutionarily derived from cyanobacteria. Plants don’t really photosynthesize–Chloroplasts photosynthesize and chloroplasts were derived from cyanobacteria.
Books for adults are another idea, which you can read together. I am not the biggest fan of Dawkins’ books, but The Greatest Show on Earth is a pretty good intro to the subject, and it does have some good illustrations. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is also very good. Stephen Jay Gould’s books are also worth checking out. Wonderful Life is a thought-provoking look at early animals of the Burgess Shale–although Gould’s interpretations of these fossils are not all that widely accepted today. My favorite authors in this realm are Andrew Knoll, Eugene Koonin, and Geerat Vermeij (my dissertation advisor many years ago at UC Davis). However, some of these books are not easy reading and are more suitable as graduate-level texts.
Good luck.
i live near the coast and cars have paint removed from them from seagull droppings because their stomach acids are so strong , i guess that is why they can eat practically anything
