Compilation of a checklist of Recent thecideoid brachiopods from the Indian Ocean and Red Sea indicates that members of this superfamily are represented by a small number of species. The subfamily Lacazellinae is represented by Ospreyella maldiviana from the Maldive Islands but the presence of Lacazella cannot yet be confirmed in the Indian Ocean as the holotype of Lacazella mauritiana from Mau...

The brachiopoda, Lingula unguis, has a pair of anterior adductors located in the center of the shell. Each muscle consists of an opaque and a translucent portion which is constructed of smooth and obliquely-striated muscle respectively. According to our ultrastructural observations, the opaque portion seems to have two types of cells. They differ only in the diameters of their thick myofilament...

Farmerella exoporosa gen. et sp.nov. is described from cold-water Permian (Bernacchian-Lymingtonian) rocks of Tasmania. The new taxon is essentially homeomorphic with Glendonia McClung & Armstrong, 1978. However, Glendonia possesses a micro-ornament of low, elongate microspines behind shallow, elongate grooves, whereas Farmerella gen.nov. (as in Notospirifir Harrington, 1955) has deep, elongate...

Independent molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses have often produced discordant results for certain groups which, for fossil-rich groups, raises the possibility that morphological data might mislead in those groups for which we depend upon morphology the most. Rhynchonellide brachiopods, with more than 500 extinct genera but only 19 extant genera represented today, provide an oppor...