Haytham El Atfyhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1618-7220,^1,2,*,** Salah Y. El Beialyhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-8823-7912,^1,*** Mohamed K. Zobaahttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1592-5781,^3,**** Asmaa A. Taha,^1,***** Dieter Uhlhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9938-5339<sup>4,******

1</sup>Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt
²Institut für Geowissenschaften, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
³Department of Geosciences, University of Texas Permian Basin, Odessa, TX, USA
⁴Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

^*CONTACT Haytham El Atfy El-Atfy@daad-alumni.de Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, 35516 Mansoura, Egypt.
^**Haytham El Atfy is an associate 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 acquired experience in industrial palynology through work with GUPCO (BP), Egypt. He 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 Paläaobotanik und Palynologie (APP), and the Paleontological Society of Egypt (PSE). Haytham is a recipient of many awards such as the Bernd Rendel Prize from the German Science Foundation (DFG), Egyptian Award of Excellence and Egyptian State Incentive Award.
^***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.
^****Mohamed K. Zobaa is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Permian Basin. He leads the palynology and sedimentary organic matter research group focusing primarily on the accumulation, distribution, and diagenesis of organic matter in time and space and how they can be used to characterize petroleum systems through the interpretation of depositional paleoenvironments, kerogen type, and organic thermal maturity. He uses palynology and palynofacies analyses as primary proxies in his research but engages other disciplines and integrates a variety of tools to support and corroborate his research findings. These include, for example, programmed pyrolysis, XRD, XRF, vitrinite reflectance, and organic petrology. Dr. Zobaa has 20 years of research experience studying the stratigraphy, palynology, and sedimentary organic matter content of some of the world's most important hydrocarbon-generating provinces (e.g., Gulf of Mexico, the Permian Basin in Texas, the San Juan Basin in New Mexico, the Williston Basin in North Dakota, and the North Western Desert of Egypt). His research results and methodologies have been published and documented in journals in the United States and internationally, such as the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Geosphere, Sedimentary Geology, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, and Marine and Petroleum Geology. Dr. Zobaa is the recipient of the prestigious University of Texas System's Rising STARs Award ($500,000) to establish his Sedimentary Organic Matter and Hydrocarbon Source-Rock Research Laboratory, which is the first of its kind in the Permian Basin area, providing comprehensive research and development support to the local hydrocarbon exploration and production operators.
^*****Asmaa A. Taha is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Egypt since 2019. She got her BSc in Geology in 2011 and her MSc in 2019 from the above institution. Her main interests are in Paleogene Palynology and its applications in age dating, palaeoenvironmental interpretation, palaeoecology, palaeoclimatology and palynofacies and its uses in hydrocarbon exploration. She is a joint author on a number of publications dealing with the Paleogene Palynology and palynofacies of the north Western Desert, Egypt.
^******Dieter Uhl is currently the Head of the Section for Palaeoclimate and Palaeoenvironmental Research at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and also adjunct Professor at the University of Tübingen (Germany). He was awarded his Diploma in Biology in 1994 from Kaiserslautern University and his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Palaeontology in 1999 from the University of Tübingen. Dieter is a member of International Organisation of Palaeobotany, Paläontologische Gesellschaft and a fellow of the Linnean Society of London. His main interest is on the use of fossil plants as palaeoenvironmental proxies. He has published about 200 scientific articles and chapters mostly in peer-reviewed journals and books.