ABSTRACT
The analysis of the stratigraphic distribution of brachiopods requires information to be extracted from the generic descriptions prepared for the recent revision of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part H (Kaesler, 2000). One possible method of doing this is to read through the entire text of the Treatise, and manually extract the stratigraphic information presented for each genus. The extracted data could then be entered into another computer program that would allow graphical displays of the number of taxa present in each stage. Apart from being extremely time-consuming, this procedure is likely to produce errors as some mistakes are inevitable during the manual extraction of the stratigraphic data. Such mistakes are very difficult to identify and correct, and manual extraction of data also imposes major limitations on wider exploitation of the data; for example, to investigate the relationship of stratigraphy and geography, or between stratigraphy and of the many other data that
are covered in the Treatise, it would be necessary to carry out another timeconsuming manual data extraction exercise.
