Watch the Second Episode of AMNH's Series Shelf Life

Last month, the American Museum of Natural History debuted its series Shelf Life, which takes viewers behind the scenes into areas of the museum that most people don't get to see. This month's episode, "Turtles and Taxonomy," features an interview with Darrel Frost, a curator in the Department of Herpetology, about how taxonomy—the science of classification—works. AMNH's collections "[are] not arranged chronologically; they're arranged by what they're related to," Frost says. "The structure of the collections themselves actually helps in the formation of questions. Most of us who are actually in science have been around these things since we were in high school, in some cases, so we're used to them. The wonder part of it isn't so much in the objects anymore as in the relationships and what they tell us in a sophisticated way."

You can find out more about Shelf Life here.