Climatic Data, Sea Floor Records

THE SEA FLOOR is blanketed with sediments composed primarily of the remains of plants and animals that live in the oceans which cover three-quarters of the Earths surface. Sea-floor sediments also include particles of soil, dust, volcanic ash, and fragments of vegetation that are washed off the land by rivers and floods, blown in by winds, or left by melting icebergs. In the deep oceans throughout the world, sea-floor sediments have piled up continuously over thousands to millions of year, silently recording the history of changes in climate and ocean conditions as far back as the time of the dinosaurs 60–80 million years ago.

Over the past 50 years, modern engineering and scientific techniques in paleoceanography have accessed these deep-water sea-floor archives and have read their ...