During the last two decades since the invention of PCR, DNA sequences have become increasingly important for the reconstruction of phylogenetic trees. However, often the species representation in such studies was determined more by the availability of fresh material than by evolutionary logic. Using museum specimens is the logical solution to this problem as museums world wide house an enormous number of specimens, representing about 1.5 million animal species. Moreover, many species, especially insect species, are often represented by only a single individual specimen and therefore it is simply impossible to obtain fresh tissue. However, the drawback of genetic analyses is that usually, part of the specimens needs to be destroyed in order to obtain DNA extracts. This procedure clearly causes problems as the morphology and other attributes of a specimen are necessary requirements for meaningful evolutionary analyses – apart from the fact that unique specimens are valuable items and some of them may even represent the only remains of already extinct species. Therefore, obtaining DNA from museum specimens without conferring damage to them would represent quite a step forward in the quest for the tree of life. Gilbert et al. in their article have accomplished exactly that for beetles – probably the largest group of species on earth. Importantly, most of the specimens – up to almost 100 years of age not only yielded mitochondrial DNA but also nuclear DNA in substantial amounts. In fact, if their calculations are correct, the extracts would last for the sequencing of between 40,000 and 550,000 basepairs of DNA sequence – sufficient to not only address phylogenetic questions but also investigate a number of genes of phenotypic or ecological interest. This number could be substantially increased if the extracts were used in multiplex PCRs and the DNA amounts are probably sufficient to obtain complete genomes, when used with some of the new sequencing techniques such as 454 sequences. Just imagine the prospect of having genome sequences of the about 300,000 beetle species taxonomically described and housed in museum collections. What an enormous source for evolutionary studies such a collection of data would provide. Certainly, as in any study there are drawbacks to this article. The major one is that only multicopy nuclear sequences (the 28s rDNA gene) have been amplified, but no single copy genes. Thus, the number of PCRs possible from the extracts may be lower than the 1,000 to 10,000 calculated by the authors. The other drawback, as also acknowledged by the authors lies in the fact that beetles are pretty hardy animals – even after death – and more fragile species may suffer at least some damage even with this procedure. Still, overall, the study is an interesting contribution that should have a major impact on DNA analyses from museum collections.