Salah Y. El Beialy,^1,* Martin J. Headhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3026-5483,^2,**,*** Haytham El Atfyhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1618-7220,^1,**** Essam M. El Khoriby<sup>1,*****

1</sup>aDepartment of Geology, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, 35516 Mansoura, Egypt
²bDepartment of Earth Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada

^*SALAH Y. EL BEIALY is an emeritus professor of palynology at Mansoura University, and in 2011–2013 was Head of its Department of Geology. Salah has long been involved in stratigraphical palynology. He gained his BSc in 1975, an MSc in 1980 from Mansoura University and a PhD in 1985 from the University of Sheffield, UK, under the late Prof. Charles Downie, and acquired experience in industrial palynology through work with Paleoservices Ltd, Shell, BP and GUPCO, Egypt. In 2006, he spent a year as a Visiting International Scholar at Brock University, Canada, collaborating with Martin J. Head on a project funded by the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, Kuwait, under the ZAMLAT Fellowship Program. Salah's main interests are in the application of palynology in dating, palaeoenvironmental interpretation, spore-colour maturity determination, and hydrocarbon exploration from the surface and subsurface Palaeozoic–Cenozoic of North Africa and the Middle East. Salah received the Mansoura University Prize for scientific excellence in 2009.
^**CONTACT Martin J. Head mjhead@brocku.ca
^***MARTIN J. HEAD is a professor of Earth sciences at Brock University and the University of Toronto, the latter a status-only appointment. He was previously at the University of Toronto, Canada (1985–1999) and the University of Cambridge, UK (1999–2005). Martin holds a BSc from Aston University and a PhD from the University of Aberdeen. Interests include late Cenozoic stratigraphy, palaeoceanography and marine palynology; and particularly the late Cenozoic record of dinoflagellate cysts and acritarchs. He currently chairs the International Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy and the Committee for Fossils of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, and is a former president of AASP–The Palynological Society.
^****HAYTHAM EL ATFY is an assistant professor at Mansoura University, from which he received a BSc in geology and an MSc in palynology. He received his PhD in geosciences (palynology and organic geochemistry) from Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, in 2014, and was recently a visiting scientist at the Senckenberg Research Institute, Germany. His research interests span all aspects of palynology and its applications in dating, palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatical reconstructions, and hydrocarbon exploration, particularly of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic and, to a lesser extent, the Palaeozoic. He has more recently become involved in organic geochemistry. Haytham is a member of the Palynological Society (AASP), the Micropalaeontological Society (TMS), Arbeitskreis für Paläobotanik und Palynologie (APP), and the Paleontological Society of Egypt (PSE). Haytham is a recipient of the Bernd Rendel Prize from the German Science Foundation (DFG).
^*****ESSAM M. EL KHORIBY is a full professor of sedimentology in the Department of Geology, Mansoura University. He received BSc and MSc degrees in 1984 and 1989, respectively, from Mansoura University, and a PhD in 1994 from Moscow State University, Russian Federation. Essam is interested in the sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy and diagenesis of sedimentary basin fills, and particularly the sedimentary basins of Libya. He was a full professor of sedimentary geology in the Department of Earth Sciences, Sabha University, Libya, from 2007 to 2015; and he was a visiting researcher in the Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden for one year in 2001–2002. He has published more than 30 scientific papers in international and national journals.