RV Sonne 1979 Cruise: Deep-Sea Geology of Western Australia

A 1979 six-week geological cruise collected 120 successful sampling stations across the Exmouth and Wallaby Plateaus, with samples from depths of 100 to 5200 meters. The expedition successfully sampled pre-Quaternary strata, revealing Early Jurassic shelf carbonates, Middle Jurassic coal measures, and volcanic sequences beneath major unconformities. Thirty-one single-channel seismic profiles were run to guide the sampling of Cretaceous shelf sediments and Cainozoic pelagic carbonates.

Use Cases

• Mapping pre-Quaternary stratigraphy based on rock samples from 31 stations.
• Analyzing seismic profiles to understand subsurface structures on the plateau margins.
• Studying the composition and age of deep-sea sediments from cores obtained for gas analysis.
• Investigating the distribution of manganese nodules and volcanic sequences in the Cuvier Abyssal Plain.

Strengths

• Contains data from 120 successfully occupied sampling stations with specific counts per plateau.
• Samples cover a wide depth range from 100 m to 5200 m, providing a vertical profile.
• Integrated data collection includes 31 seismic profiles, rock samples, and sediment cores.

Limitations

• Specific column names and data schema are unknown, limiting structured analysis.
• Metadata for size, row count, license, and author is consistently missing across all platform entries.
• The most recent update date (2026-06-23) appears to be a future date, indicating potential metadata errors.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, from a cruise under the Australian-German Science Agreement.

Collection Method

Geological sampling and single-channel seismic profiling from the West German research vessel Sonne.

Time Range

1979 (from cruise year in title).

Freshness

Last updated: 2026-06-23 04:34:33.483164 (data_gov_au)

Geography

Exmouth Plateau, Wallaby Plateau, and Cuvier Abyssal Plain off Western Australia.