Paleozoic Brachiopod Biogeography

Abstract

Over two hundred years ago the Swedish scientist Carl Linnæus (1781), in an analysis of the biogeographic patterns of living organisms, suggested that all species originated in Paradise. Although there has been considerable progress in the understanding of biogeographical patterns during the intervening two centuries, modern debate has focused on the general applicability of the concept of faunal realms together with the relevance of dispersal, panbiogeographic, and vicariance models (Nelson and Platnick, 1981). To date, studies of Paleozoic brachiopod biogeography have no strong theoretical base; rather the various numerical techniques available, including both cladistic and phenetic methodologies, have helped organize the growing amount of distributional data into recognizable and useful structures.