The North Atlantic Ocean: An overview

The North Atlantic is one of the most important oceans for virtually any subject of scientific interest. Geophysicists investigating rifting and plate tectonics, as well as marine geologists and marine micropaleontologists, appreciate that even the birth of the North Atlantic is still recorded in the form of sediments in t l~ea stern- and westernmost parts of the equatorial North Atlantic. Like all other oceans, much of the geological history of the North Atlantic has been reconstructed due to the success of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) and its predecessor the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). Since the launch of the drilling programs, many cores have recovered sediments, including subsediment crustal structures, that led to the understanding of the evolution of (not only!) the North Atlantic Ocean, its paleoceanography and the Eartll's climatic development through the past 155 million years