Ocean Drilling Program cores from Legs 119 and 188 provide direct evidence for Cenozoic paleoenvironmental shifts in Prydz Bay, East Antarctica. The data reveals a transition from a Late Cretaceous alluvial plain to a marine continental shelf environment by the early Oligocene, marked by the first advance of the ice sheet. This dataset is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated in April 2026.
Use Cases
- Modeling Cenozoic paleoenvironmental transitions based on core evidence from continental margin drilling.
- Analyzing the shift from fluvio-deltaic to marine shelf environments using sediment core data.
- Studying the onset and evolution of Antarctic glaciation based on grain textures and glacial sediment records.
- Correlating seismic data interpretations with physical core evidence for periods where cores are unavailable.
- Reconstructing Late Cretaceous to Eocene vegetation changes from pollen or sediment evidence in cores.
Strengths
- Data provides direct evidence from physical cores drilled during two Ocean Drilling Program legs.
- Covers a long-term geological timeframe from the Late Cretaceous through the Cenozoic.
- Integrates core data with seismic interpretations for periods where physical cores are missing.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the specific drilling sites.
Provenance
- Source
- Australian Ocean Data Network
- Collection Method
- Drilling during Ocean Drilling Program Legs 119 (1988) and 188 (2000).
- Time Range
- Late Cretaceous through Cenozoic (with a gap from early Oligocene to early Miocene).
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-16 14:27:26.428466; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Prydz Bay region, East Antarctica.