ABSTRACT
Our morphogenetic interest in brachiopods, the “armfooted ones”, may start with two prejudices. The first one (at one time expressed by Dolf as an excuse for not including them in this book) is that brachiopods are basically just another kind of bivalve. The other (shared by many fellow paleontologists) refers to an elaborate terminology for internal shell structures hidden behind rather boring outer morphologies of post-Paleozoic clades. This makes brachiopods an uninviting group for non-specialists. Both prejudices are, of course, unjust; but what, exactly, makes brachiopods so different from bivalved molluscs or crustaceans?
