Kenneth Neil Mertens,^1,*,** M. Consuelo Carbonell-Moore,^2,*** Kristina Gardner<sup>3,****

1</sup>Ifremer, LITTORAL, Concarneau, France
²Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, College of Agricultural Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
³Department of Earth Sciences, University of Delaware, DE, USA

^*CONTACT Kenneth Neil Mertens kenneth.mertens@ifremer.fr Ifremer, LITTORAL, Concarneau, 29900 France.
^**Kenneth Neil Mertens is a researcher at Ifremer, LER BO, Concarneau, France. He received his PhD in 2009 from Ghent University. His research interests are the taxonomy, evolution, phylogeny, and biogeography of dinoflagellates, and the palaeoceanographical application of dinoflagellate cysts, particularly in the Quaternary and Neogene.
^***M. Consuelo Carbonell-Moore is a retired oceanographer, researching the morphology of tropical dinoflagellates at Oregon State University, in Corvallis, Oregon, USA. She has described several new genera and species of dinoflagellates. Her main focus is the study of the family Podolampadaceae Lindemann as well as rare dinoflagellates found in deep waters (shade species) in different tropical areas of the world's oceans.
^****Kristina Gardner has a BSc in geology from Morehead State University, where her undergraduate thesis was on fungal palynomorphs from the PETM in Texas. Currently she is pursuing a master's degree at the University of Delaware using dinoflagellate cysts, pollen and spores extracted from samples from the Paleocene–Eocene boundary in the central Delaware coastal plain. The aim is an environmental reconstruction of the nearshore to offshore transition to clarify the stratigraphy at the truncation of the Rancocoas aquifer in Kent County, Delaware.