Dr. Meirav Meiri is a curator of Bioarchaeology and the Head of the Animal and Plant Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. Meirav received her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, supervised by Prof. Ian Barnes and Prof. Adrian Lister (both from the Natural History Museum, London). She then completed her postdoctoral studies at Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. Her primary interest is in paleogenetics as a powerful tool to address questions relating to evolutionary relationships of species, population movements, and the impact of environmental changes on demography over time. Her current research focuses on the taxonomy and population genetics of several locally extinct and extant Israeli species.