So 2024 is over and wasn't it... er... 366 days of stuff happening.

As is tradition, here are my 12 favourite stories I've written over the year. These are the ones I'm most proud of, for whatever reason. Happy reading!

Game-changing archaeology from the past 5 years - and what's to come
Leading archaeologists share the biggest recent advances in our understanding of human evolution, and their hopes for the exciting finds the next five years may have in store

Readers deserve better from popular science books
There is a dirty secret in publishing: most popular science books aren't fact-checked. This needs to change

Iceberg A-68: The story of how a mega-berg transformed the ocean
The world's largest icebergs – which can be larger than entire countries in some cases – break off the Antarctic ice sheet. As they drift and melt in the Southern Ocean, they create a unique environment around them.

Geology's biggest mystery: When did plate tectonics start to reshape Earth?
Researchers have spent decades hunting for clues about the origins of the process that moves the continents around. Its deep history is finally starting to come into focus.

Why fantasy has often handled environmentalism better than science fiction
Science fiction struggles to portray environmental concerns; fantasy brings them to life (originally published in Arc 10 years ago, republished on my blog in 2024 so it counts)

The truth about social media and screen time's impact on young peopleThere are many scary claims about excess time on digital devices for children and teenagers. Here’s a guide to the real risks - and what to do about them

The UK coal-fired power station that became a giant battery
The closure of the last coal-fired power station in the UK raises questions about how old fossil fuel infrastructure can be repurposed. One option is to use them to store energy from renewables.

The unexpected reasons why human childhood is extraordinarily long
Why childhood is so protracted has long been mysterious, now a spate of archaeological discoveries suggest an intriguing explanation

The Earth's deepest living organisms may hold clues to alien life on Mars
To understand the life that might survive deep below Mars' surface, we can look to some of the deepest, and oldest, forms of living organism on our own planet.

First Nations astronomers predicted eclipses without using writing
The oldest written records of eclipses are in cuneiform texts from around 2000 BC, but examination of oral traditions reveal First Nations astronomers were predicting eclipses by word of mouth

How CRISPR could yield the next blockbuster crop
Scientists are attempting to rapidly domesticate wild plant species by editing specific genes, but they face major technical challenges — and concerns about exploitation of Indigenous knowledge.

And last but most definitely not least:

Our human ancestors often ate each other, and for surprising reasons
Fossil evidence shows that humans have been practising cannibalism for a million years. Now, archaeologists are discovering that some of the time they did it to honour their dead