Noelia Nuñez Otaño,^1,* Mercedes di Pasquo,^1,** M. Virginia Bianchinotti<sup>2,***

1</sup>aLaboratorio de Palinoestratigrafía y Paleobotánica, CICYTTP—CONICET, Dr. Matteri y España S/N, Diam
²bCERZOS-UNS, CONICET-CCT Bahía Blanca, Camino La Carrindanga km 7, Bahía Blanca (B8000FWB), Buenos A

^*Noelia Nuñez Otaño studied at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, where she received a doctorate degree in natural sciences in 2013. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) at the Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia de Tecnología a la Producción (CICYTTP). Her expertise is in the study of fungal diversity from recent and past natural habitats.
^**Mercedes di Pasquo received her PhD in 1999 from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina and in 2002, she became a permanent researcher of CONICET. She was a teacher at UBA between 1988 and 2008, of the semestral courses of Paleontology and Palynostratigraphy, courses of Geology and Biology (up to 2008), and Micropaleontology and Paleontology (2005–2008). In 2009, she was a Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Idaho. Since 2010 she has been an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Idaho (Moscow, Idaho, USA), collaborating on the study of Upper Palaeozoic palynofloral changes in Bolivia and Argentina during the Gondwanaland glaciation. During 2010, she became a senior researcher and was transferred to the CICYTTP in Diamante, Entre Ríos, Argentina. There she founded the Palynostratigraphy and Palaeobotany Laboratory. Her expertise is in the palynology of the Silurian to Permian, Cretaceous and Cenozoic of South America, the Devonian and Carboniferous boundary of Montana (USA), the Holocene of the Entre Ríos Province and the Devonian plant fossils of Bolivia-Argentina. Mercedes is currently President of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Paleobotánica y Palinología (2009–2016, www.ufrgs.br/alpp), and was a special researcher with the Brazilian Program ‘Science without borders’ CNPq 2013–2014. She worked at the UFRGS (Porto Alegre) and UNISINOS (São Leopoldo, Brazil) on the Carboniferous and Permian palynofloras of the Paran á Basin and its comparison to South American basins. Since 2000, she has been a consultant to the oil industry and worked on palynostratigraphical and palaeoenvironment issues from different intervals of the Phanerozoic in South America.
^***M. Virginia Bianchinotti studied at the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina, where she received a doctoral degree in biology in 1994. She is currently a researcher at CONICET. Her research is focused on the biodiversity and taxonomy of ascomycetes.