Introduction

A congress of brachiopodologists was first conceived by French devotees to the phylum and was delivered as an enfant doué at Brest in 1985. The experience was so agreeably stimulating that a procedure was immediately adopted for holding such congresses every five years. In 1990, a meeting duly took place at Dunedin in New Zealand. The venue, no less than the Congress itself, dispelled any doubts about the value of quinquenniel get-togethers. The rich, offshore brachiopod faunas there afforded Congress-goers, who were mostly palaeontologists, a rare opportunity of seeing and collecting living specimens and even of beachcombing for dead shells before their fossilization! In striking contrast between modern and ancient, the equally successful Congress of 1995 met at Sudbury, a gateway to superbly preserved brachiopod communities that dominated the shallow water faunas of the Canadian Shield, 460-430 mya.