Manuel Vieira,^1,*,** Manuel Casas-Gallego,^2,*** Salih Mahdi,^3,**** Jim Fenton<sup>2,*****

1</sup>aShell UK Ltd., Nigg, UK
²bCGG Robertson, Llandudno, UK
³cRPS Ichron Ltd., Northwich, UK

^*CONTACT Manuel Vieira Manuel.Vieira@Shell.com Shell UK Ltd., 1 Altens Farm Road, Nigg, Aberdeen AB12 3FY, UK.
^**Manuel Vieira is currently based in Aberdeen, since 2013, working as a Biostratigrapher for Shell UK supporting all the offshore Northwest Europe activities. Undergraduate at Minho University (Portugal), followed by a PhD studying Pliocene palynology completed in 2008. Before joined Shell worked as a consultant Stratigrapher/Palynologist with Ichron Ltd. Was involved in projects from the North Sea (UK and Norway), Faroes, West of Shetlands, India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Morocco, Falklands and Greenland. Experienced at wellsite on several wells (Cenozoic and Mesozoic sequences).
^***Manuel Casas-Gallego is a Stratigrapher with CGG Robertson UK. He started working on palynology in 2005 during a stay at the Montpellier University (France), studying Miocene sediments of Thailand. He earned his PhD degree at the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2017 undertaking research on the Paleogene palynology of northern Spain. Manuel worked as a consultant palynologist/paleobotanist in Madrid from 2006 to 2014, before joining CGG Robertson UK, where he has been involved in projects from the Cenozoic and Mesozoic of the North Sea and Norwegian Sea, West and East Africa, North America, Jamaica, Romania and SE Asia, among others.
^****Salih Mahdi is a Principal Palynologist/Stratigrapher with RPS ichron, based in Northwich Cheshire, he studied geology at the University of Baghdad, Iraq, before undertaking research on the Carboniferous palynology of northern England at the University of Aston in Birmingham, for which he was awarded a PhD in 1982. In 1986 he joined Gearhart Geoconsultant to work on Mesozoic and Paleogene successions in the North Sea. He was soon called upon to work on the Carboniferous palynology of the southern North Sea (UK and Dutch sectors) Irish Sea and onshore UK. Since then he enquired extensive biostratigraphical experience of Paleogene, Mesozoic and Palaeozoic sequences of Northwest Europe. He also has extensive biostratigraphic experience of Upper Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Tertiary sequences of Brazil, Falkland, North and West Africa, Middle East (Iraq, Qatar, Oman 7→ Syria), India and Pakistan.
^*****Jim Fenton is Chief Stratigrapher with CGG Robertson, based in Llandudno, North Wales. He studied geology at University of Sheffield, graduating in 1975 before undertaking research on the palynology of the Middle Jurassic of the East Midlands at the same institution. He was awarded a Ph.D in 1980. In 1978 he joined Robertson Research and commenced work on Mesozoic and Tertiary successions in NW Europe. Geographic and stratigraphic expansion has led to single and multi-disciplinary studies, often associated with seismic and sedimentological interpretations, on basins ranging from offshore New Zealand to the Norwegian/Russian Barents Sea and West Coast Canada to Mongolia, with stratigraphy varying from Pleistocene to Carboniferous. Key areas of expertise are NW Europe, East and West Africa, East Coast Canada and USA, onshore USA (Wyoming and Texas), South America (Peru) and Middle East (Kurdistan, Kuwait, Yemen). Wellsite studies have been completed in the Barents Sea, Norwegian Sea, North Sea (UK, Norway and Denmark), offshore Senegal, Gabon and Tanzania.