Dr. Melanie Hopkins is an assistant curator in the Division of Paleontology at the Museum. Dr. Hopkins is working to unlock the history of the evolution of animals over vast stretches of geologic time. For her, the key is trilobites—extinct arthropods that lived for almost 300 million years until 250 million years ago, when Earth experienced the largest mass extinction in its history. Her research takes her out into the field but also into the Museum's collections, which include an estimated 400,000 specimens and where new discoveries wait to be made.