Deep-Sea Drilling : Discovering New Worlds
11
Deep-Sea Drilling: Discovering New Worlds
The emergence of the new paradigm greatly stimulated the beginning of a major
venture in marine geology: the systematic exploration of the deep-sea floor by drilling. Up to 1968, before the drilling vessel GLOMAR Challenger (Fig. 0.6) set out on
her first cruise (from Galveston in Texas), knowledge of sediments older than I
million years was entirely based on cores taken in regions of greatly reduced sedimentation and erosion, where younger sediments had been removed. Such a core
would typically represent a short stretch of time somewhere within the long history of
the ocean. Detailed comparison with other cores, from other regions, was hardly ever
possible, because of the difficulty of exact age assignment. The task of reconstructing
a global ocean history for the pre-Quaternary could only be seriously attempted when
more or less continuous sequences of samples became available, through drilling ,
from many different regions.
The materials recovered by drilling resulted in a quantum jump in biostratigraphic
resolution - soon it became possible to date samples within sequences to within less
than a million years relative to some standard. The first major result was full confirFig. 0.6. The 120-m-long deep-sea drilling vessel GLOMAR Challenger, which was working from
1968 to 1983 , sampling the sea floor of the world's ocean. During this period 1092 holes were
drilled on 624 si tes, many in water depths of more than 5 km. The length of core materi al recovered
measures over 90 km. The ship was managed by the Scripps In sitution of Oceanography within the
Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), which was the most important earth sc ience project of the 1970s,
funded by the USA. Since the mid-1970s the U.S. National Science Foundation. USSR, Germany.
Japan . the United Kingdom , and France have participated in the Project and helped in providing
support. [Photo courtesy DSDP, S.I.O.]
11
Deep-Sea Drilling: Discovering New Worlds
The emergence of the new paradigm greatly stimulated the beginning of a major
venture in marine geology: the systematic exploration of the deep-sea floor by drilling. Up to 1968, before the drilling vessel GLOMAR Challenger (Fig. 0.6) set out on
her first cruise (from Galveston in Texas), knowledge of sediments older than I
million years was entirely based on cores taken in regions of greatly reduced sedimentation and erosion, where younger sediments had been removed. Such a core
would typically represent a short stretch of time somewhere within the long history of
the ocean. Detailed comparison with other cores, from other regions, was hardly ever
possible, because of the difficulty of exact age assignment. The task of reconstructing
a global ocean history for the pre-Quaternary could only be seriously attempted when
more or less continuous sequences of samples became available, through drilling ,
from many different regions.
The materials recovered by drilling resulted in a quantum jump in biostratigraphic
resolution - soon it became possible to date samples within sequences to within less
than a million years relative to some standard. The first major result was full confirFig. 0.6. The 120-m-long deep-sea drilling vessel GLOMAR Challenger, which was working from
1968 to 1983 , sampling the sea floor of the world's ocean. During this period 1092 holes were
drilled on 624 si tes, many in water depths of more than 5 km. The length of core materi al recovered
measures over 90 km. The ship was managed by the Scripps In sitution of Oceanography within the
Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), which was the most important earth sc ience project of the 1970s,
funded by the USA. Since the mid-1970s the U.S. National Science Foundation. USSR, Germany.
Japan . the United Kingdom , and France have participated in the Project and helped in providing
support. [Photo courtesy DSDP, S.I.O.]