Paleoceanography

Paleoceanography is the science of the history of the world ocean and its subbasins, of their physiography, benthic and planktonic biota, water masses and their properties, circulation patterns of surface, intermediate, and bottom water masses. Quantitative paleoceanography can in essence only be done from pelagic and hemipelagic sediments of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ocean, basically from the age of the oldest undisturbed ocean crust to modern times. It is closely linked to the time of collecting ocean-wide geophysical data (marine seismics, magnetics), of deep-sea drilling and our increasing ability to collect long sediment cores, providing a global coverage and long, undisturbed time series of paleoceanographic data. It is henceforth a young subdiscipline of the marine geosciences