Foreword - Proceedings of the 8th International Brachiopod Congress “Brachiopods in a changing planet: from the past to the future” (Milano, 10-14 September 2018)

The 8th International Brachiopod Congress took place in the prestigious venue of the Univer¬sity of Milano, Italy, in September 2018, after the previous edition held in Nanjing, China, in 2015. 150 participants from universities and re¬search institutes from all over the world attended the meeting, from Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Den¬mark, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Israel, It¬aly, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States of America. Besides oral and poster scientific sessions, pico-presentations of young researchers, and two prestigious plenary lectures, the Congress was preceded and followed by three field trips (Spain, United Kingdom and Sicily), and by two mid-con¬gress day excursions at Castell’Arquato and Grigna Mountains. During the congress, all the topics and the re¬cent advances in the study of brachiopods, marine invertebrates that have dominated the Palaeozoic seas and had an important role in the Phaneorozo¬ic benthic communities, have been touched: from systematics and evolution to biostratigraphy, pala¬eoecology, palaeobiogeography, mass extinctions, and the biology of recent taxa. One of the novelties of this edition was a session dedicated to brachio¬pod shells as biomineral archives of fundamental importance to understand the evolution of marine calcifiers during climate and environmental changes in recent and deep time. So, also biomineralization and geochemistry were among the topics of the event. The high scientific level, activity and wide and interdisciplinary interests of the brachiopod re¬searchers’ community are testified by the numerous contributions received for the Proceedings of the 8th International Brachiopod Congress, 16 of which are published open access in issue 125/3 of Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia.