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Dr Mike Simmons is Technology Fellow for Geosciences and the Energy Transition for Halliburton Inc. at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and a Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum in London. He is a global thought-leader on industry-related geoscience topics such as sequence stratigraphy, sea-levels; their magnitudes and timing, basin analysis, large-scale and dimensionless geoscience databases, predictions using AI & ML and, not least, the Energy Transition. Formerly 17 years with BP and subsequently at Aberdeen University and chief geoscientist at CASP, Mike was a co-founder and Director of Neftex Geological Consultants Ltd. in 2001. Ever since completing his PhD on Cretaceous shallow-water carbonates from Oman, and their biostratigraphy, Mike has always been interested in the value of different fossil groups to the integrated biostratigraphy of the Neotethyan region. |
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Dr Lorenzo Consorti is a senior research scientist at CNR-ISMAR (Institute of Marine Sciences) in Trieste, Italy. His research field is the sedimentary shallow-water successions of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic as archives of past climate change and sedimentary and biological processes. He specialises in the study of larger benthic foraminifera but has wide-ranging research interests; publishing on topics as diverse as LBF, to digital imaging of shark vertebrae all the way up to the study of past oceans and lakes on Mars! |
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Dr Felix Schlagintweit is an independent researcher based in Munich, Germany. Felix has a deep interest in LBF from the Triassic to the Paleogene, and has published over 100 articles on the subject, specialising on the detailed morphology of the group and how fossil species can be identified. |
Mike B, Mike S, Lorenzo & Felix are currently focussing on the biostratigraphic aspects of the Mid Cretaceous, in particular the Cenomanian (where they have recently published reviews on the planktonic and the "larger benthic" foraminiferal biostratigraphy - the latter work part of a major effort to document and refine Cenomanian LBF biostratigraphy - and the Turonian and Coniacian stages.
In Preparation/Press:
Simmons, M.D. & Bidgood, M.D. Cenomanian larger benthic foraminifera - a stratigraphic review. [an assessment of the validity of published data to evaluate the identity and stratigraphy of LBF recorded from Cenomanian strata - an extension paper to our 2023 review of "planispiral" forms, this data includes the assessment of over 100 species and which will be published as a series of papers covering separate taxonomic groups]
Simmons, M.D. & Bidgood, M.D. Cenomanian marine biostratigraphy: a review. [a review, comparison and integration of the stratigraphy of numerous fossil groups e.g., ammonites, inoceramids, foraminifera, nannofossils, palynomorphs, bivalves, ostracods, microcrinoids, radiolaria, together with radiometric dating, isotope curves and sea-levels]
Published:
Bidgood, M.D., 2025. The Silverpit Crater – Evidence of a Dinosaur Killer? Informal GSS article.
Bidgood, M.D., Schlagintweit, F., & Simmons, M.D. 2024. The genus Orbitolina d'Orbigny, 1850 (Larger Benthic Foraminifera) and its constituent species: notes on identity and stratigraphic ranges. Acta Palaeontologica Romaniae, 20 (2), 33-59.
Mahboubi, C.Y., Naimi, M.N., Simmons, M.D. & Bidgood, M.D., 2024. Algal microfacies in the Theniet Et Temar Formation (middle Oxfordian), Central Saharan Atlas, Algeria. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association,135 (1), 78-88.
Simmons, M.D. and Bidgood, M.D., 2022. Hemicyclammina whitei (Henson, 1948): The senior synonym of Hemicyclammina sigali Maync 1953, a distinctive larger benthonic foraminifer from the Mid-Cretaceous of Neotethys. Acta Palaeontologica Romaniae, 19 (1), 27-40.Bidgood, M.D. and Simmons, M.D., 2022. Cenomanian planktonic foraminifera, bioevents and biozonation – A brief review. Newsletters on Stratigraphy, 56 (2), (2023), 125 - 156.Okay et al., 2020. Eocene-Oligocene succession at Kıyıköy (Midye) on the Black Sea coast in Thrace. Turkish Journal of Earth Science, 29, 139-153.Simmons, M.D., Bidgood, M.D., Brenac, P. et al., 1999. Microfossils assemblages as proxies for precise palaeoenvironmental determination - an example from Miocene sediments of northwest Borneo. In: Jones, R. W. & Simmons, M. D. (eds), Biostratigraphy in Production and Development Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 152, 219-241.