Data for: Post-extinction diversification patterns of brachiopods in the earliest Silurian (early–middle Llandovery)

The dataset is based mainly on previously published information, in addition to new taxonomic revisions by the authors of this study. Cocks and Rong (2008) recognized a total of 109 genera of Rhuddanian brachiopods, in which 63 genera are early Rhuddanian, and 87 genera late Rhuddanian in age. This global dataset was updated by Huang et al. (2012). The information from recent studies on Rhuddanian brachiopods are also incorporated into the new database which contains 83 and 98 genera of lower and upper Rhuddanian respectively. Rong and Cocks (2014) recognized 509 occurrences of 215 genera of Aeronian brachiopods worldwide. In this dataset, however, only the well-documented brachiopod faunas from South China, Avalonia, Baltica, Laurentia and Siberia are used for paleobiodiversity and paleobiogeographic analyses. Aeronian brachiopods from high-latitude Gondwana were also taken into consideration. For many Aeronian brachiopod faunas, it has not been possible to separate them into the early or late Aeronian due to biostratigraphic limitations. For this study, the new information provided for the Aeronian brachiopods of South China and northern Laurentia is also incorporated