ODP Leg 188: Cenozoic Glacial Transitions in Prydz Bay, East Antarctica

Drilling during Leg 119 (1988) and Leg 188 (2000) of the Ocean Drilling Program provides direct evidence for long- and short-term changes in Cenozoic paleoenvironments in the Prydz Bay region. Cores from Sites 1165-1167 reveal transitions from a Late Cretaceous alluvial plain to an Eocene rainforest scrub, and the first ice sheet advance onto the shelf in the late Eocene to early Oligocene. The dataset is provided by Geoscience Australia Data and was last updated in 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling Antarctic ice sheet evolution based on sediment core evidence of the first ice advance.
• Reconstructing Late Cretaceous to Eocene terrestrial vegetation changes from core lithology.
• Analyzing the marine flooding event that marked the shift from a fluvio-deltaic to a continental shelf environment.
• Correlating seismic data with core gaps to infer shelf progradation from the early Oligocene to early Miocene.

Strengths

• Provides direct physical evidence from two Ocean Drilling Program legs (119 and 188) spanning over a decade.
• Cores cover a significant temporal range from the Late Cretaceous through the Cenozoic era.
• Integrates core data with seismic data to infer history where physical cores are missing.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Cores do not exist for the early Oligocene to early Miocene period, creating a data gap.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and structure require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data, originating from the Ocean Drilling Program.

Collection Method

Data gathered from drilling and core analysis during ODP Legs 119 and 188, supplemented by seismic interpretation.

Time Range

Late Cretaceous through Cenozoic era, with a noted gap from early Oligocene to early Miocene.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 14:10:04.088366; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Prydz Bay region, East Antarctica, specifically ODP Sites 1165, 1166, and 1167.