Abstract
It is a great understatement to say that our knowledge of morphologic, stratigraphic, and paleobiogeographic variation among brachiopods has expanded enormously over the past 35 years. The number of brachiopod genera discovered and named since 1965 has more than doubled the approximately 1700 genera described in Part H of theTreatise on Invertebrate Paleontology(Williams and others, 1965). 4827 genera and subgenera named as of 1995 are listed in Doescher (1996); it is likely that over 5000 exist by now. Some are certain to be reevaluated as synonyms, but we have no reason to believe that this would apply to most new genera. This remarkable increase in raw data required a thorough reexamination of the phylogenetic relationships and higher-level classification of the group, encouraged largely by the revision of Part H of theTreatise, initiated in the late 1980s by Alwyn Williams.
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