Sophie Warny,^1,2,* C. Madison Kymes,^1,** Rosemary Askin,^3,*** Krzysztof P. Krajewski,^4,****,***** Andrzej Tatur<sup>5,******

1</sup>aLSU Department of Geology and Geophysics E-235 Howe-Russell, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
²bLSU Museum of Natural Science, 109 Foster Hall, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
³cConsultant, Jackson, Wyoming, United States
⁴dInstitute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, 00-818 Warszawa, Poland
⁵eFaculty of Geology, University of Warsaw, Żwirki i Wigury 93, 02-089 Warszawa, Poland

^*SOPHIE WARNY is an associate professor of palynology in the Department of Geology and Geophysics and a curator at the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She has a long history with AASP as she won the AASP Student Award in 1996, served as Director-At-Large on the AASP board from 2006 to 2007, was the AASP newsletter editor from 2006 to 2015, and is now the AASP Chair in Palynology. She received her PhD degree from the Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium working with Dr Jean-Pierre Suc on the Messinian Salinity Crisis. In 2011, she received a NSF CAREER award to conduct palynological research in Antarctica. Since being hired at LSU in 2008, she directed 18 graduate students' theses on various Cretaceous to Cenozoic sections. Her students are now employed with the oil and gas industry (HESS, BP, DEVON, CHEVRON, BHP Billiton Petroleum, and EOG), with the US Department of Homeland Security, with environmental companies, with IODP, or as instructor.
^**C. MADISON KYMES earned an MS degree in palynology at CENEX (the Center for Excellence in Palynology) in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University, Louisiana, USA, under the direction of S. Warny and R. Askin in 2015. Madison was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, but spent the majority of his life growing up in Madison, Mississippi. During his MS degree, Madison interned as an environmental geologist with a consulting company and was hired, after his graduation, by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, in their office of Land and Water, in Jackson, Mississippi.
^***ROSEMARY ASKIN is currently a palynological consultant in Jackson, Wyoming. She earned her PhD degree from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She has conducted research and taught in several US universities, most recently at Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University. Her most recent project there was establishing the US Polar Rock Repository. Her specialty is the use of palynology as a tool in biostratigraphy and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Current research projects primarily involve taxonomy, evolution and distribution of Cretaceous-Neogene terrestrial palynomorphs from the Ross Sea region, Siple Coast and northern Antarctic Peninsula; and on Permian-Triassic palynomorphs of the Transantarctic Mountains. She served as Director-At-Large on the AASP Board from 1994 to 1996, and was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of America in 1997.
^**** Deceased
^*****KRZYSZTOF P. KRAJEWSKI was a professor of earth sciences at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warszawa. He obtained his PhD degree in 1986, and continued his studies and research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, University of Oslo, and University of Oldenburg. He completed his DSc degree in 2001 in the fields of sedimentary petrology and geochemistry. His scientific interests focused on the interactions between biological activity and mineral deposition in carbonate, phosphate, and organic carbon-rich sedimentary systems. For more than 20 years, Krajewski carried out geological research in the Arctic, where he concentrated on the Mesozoic phosphorites and petroleum source beds. He was also involved in the research on the evolution of Cenozoic sedimentary systems in Antarctica. Krzysztof passed away on 21 November 2017, during the final stages of revision of this paper. His field expertise and knowledge of the Antarctic Peninsula will be greatly missed.
^******ANDRZEJ TATUR graduated from the Department of Geology of Warsaw University in the field of petrography, geochemistry and mineralogy in 1969. From 1970 to 2002, Tatur worked for the Institute of Ecology, at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2011, he became the director of the Department of Polar Biology, and then was hired as a full professor in the Department of Geology at University of Warsaw where he still works today. He obtained his PhD degree in 1978, habilitation in 2002 and professor degree in 2011. He took part in more than 10 geological and ecological expeditions with Polish, Argentinian and Russian teams to Antarctica, Patagonia and to the Arctic. He participated in several international EU and Antarctic Scientific projects and published over 100 publications that are available in Google Scholar. From 2005 to 2011, he served as the expert in Natural Environmental Protection for the Polish Delegation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at annual ATCM/CEP Meetings.