A huge thank you to all our readers for another wonderful year of Twilight Beasts! For some reason we didn’t receive our annual ‘summary of’ breakdown, so we shall pull it together for you!

Thank you for all your continued support and feedback on our blog post about these wonderful creatures of the past. Living in this virtual world, it is not that easy to show how much we appreciate your support with the blog. We hope that readers do get that from our tweets and our writing.

So, the eagerly awaited ‘best of’ list is here. Here are the most read (and the least read) beast blog posts of 2016. Show them a little love, and delve in deeper to discover more!

Bottom 5 read blog posts:

1. Down the rabbit hole. Small islands and giant dormice take centre stage in this post looking at the fragility of species.
2. The ancients of the forest. Not all our blog posts are about giant mammals. Or lizards. Or insects. This one is about a giant tree from New Zealand!
3. T’was the night before Christmas. I guess, in the words of Pierce Bronsan, Christmas only comes once a year. But you can find out all about how Reindeers once travelled in their thousands across Europe!
4. Baby’s got quack. Well, Japan once had a pretty big Duck. And this blog post has a pretty great title too.
5. A tiny Twilight Beast in a world of giants. The least read post of 2016.: this deserves a click if only for the cuteness. Discover how the smallest deer, the Pudu, survived the last Ice Age.

This beautiful object was carved from fragile mammoth tusk. These two reindeer look as though they are swimming, although this may be due to the lack of depth of a mammoth tusk. (Image from the British Museum)

Our top 5 read blog posts of 2016:

1. Going Underground. A spectacular insight in to the lives of Giant Ground Sloths: some species dug enormous burrows!!
2. The bear from Clare – new evidence for an early human presence in Late Pleistocene Ireland. Early last year a bear knee cap was discovered in the National Museum Ireland, with cut marks on it. Discover how this incredible find pushes back the date for humans in Ireland.
3. Lost as the Moa is lost! The enormous flightless bird from New Zealand, the Moa, only became extinct around 600 years ago.
4. On the Origins of our species. Our first guest blog post makes it in the tope 5! Find out where we come from, and how really, despite geography, we are all more closely related than we think.
5. The hyena that was overshadowed by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Yay! A hyena post made it in the top 5!! This is all about the only hyena species that made it to America, he who saw the canon.

One enormous claw from a Giant Ground Sloth on display at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. This enormous claw could dig through rock. To make tunnels! (Image by Jan Freedman)

We hope you enjoyed our blog posts from 2016! We shall be bringing lots more new and exciting beasts to you for 2017.

Until then, enjoy the top (and bottom) 5 posts.

We wish all our readers a very happy and healthy 2017. Ross (@DeepFriedDNA), Rena (@JustRena) and Jan (@JanFreedman)