Prydz Bay Glacial Transitions from Ocean Drilling Cores

Ocean Drilling Program Legs 119 and 188 provide direct evidence for Cenozoic paleoenvironmental changes in East Antarctica's Prydz Bay region. Cores from sites 1165-1167 document transitions from Late Cretaceous alluvial plains to Oligocene marine shelves and ice sheet advances. This synthesis, published by the Australian Ocean Data Network, integrates core data with seismic interpretations.

Use Cases

• Reconstructing Late Cretaceous to Eocene terrestrial vegetation shifts using core-derived pollen and sediment data from Site 1166.
• Analyzing grain textures in late Eocene fluvial sands to date the onset of nearby mountain glaciation.
• Identifying the marine flooding surface in cores to mark the permanent shift from fluvio-deltaic to marine shelf environments.
• Using seismic data interpretations to infer continental shelf progradation and submarine canyon formation for the early Oligocene to early Miocene gap.

Strengths

• Data spans two major drilling expeditions (Leg 119 in 1988 and Leg 188 in 2000) providing multi-decadal observations.
• Integrates direct core evidence from multiple sites (1165-1167) with seismic data for a more complete geological interpretation.

Limitations

• Core data is missing for the critical early Oligocene to early Miocene period, creating a knowledge gap.
• The primary data format is an HTML publication, which may require extraction for quantitative analysis.
• Sample size and specific row/column counts for underlying data are unknown.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, synthesizing Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) data.

Collection Method

Direct core sampling and analysis from ODP drilling legs, supplemented by seismic data interpretation.

Time Range

Late Cretaceous to Cenozoic (focus on Eocene-Oligocene-Miocene transitions).

Freshness

Publication metadata updated April 2026.

Geography

Prydz Bay region, East Antarctica.