Here available a copy of the Archives of the "SIBIC" (Smithsonian International Brachiopod Information Center) which include reviewed lists of fossil taxa described before 1995, prepared by my friend Rex Doescher. Se also Brachiopoda database which replaced SIBIC in 1995.
According to the high number of non-valid species names (in some places nearly 100%) a database of fossil taxa should not be based only on valid species including a true diagnosis for each based on a cladistic analysis. A similar comment may partly apply for extant species (about 5-10% should be synonymous) while several phylogenetic characters are not studied when describing a species or a new one.
’ What’s the use of their having names’, the Gnat said, ’if they won’t answer to them? ’
’No use to THEM,’ said Alice; ’but it’s useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all? ’
Lewis Carroll (1871): Alice through the looking glass.
