Sites 907 and 985 are located on the Iceland Plateau (Fig. 1) and are part of a paleoenvironmental transect from the Vøring Plateau (Sites 642-644, Leg 104) to the Greenland margin (Site 987). The objectives at these sites are to monitor the climatically sensitive and variable thermal gradients between the polar areas near Greenland and temperate areas off Norway, derive an open-ocean record of ice-rafted debris (IRD) and carbonate accumulation, and document the history of the formation of northern-source deep waters. Piston cores from the southern Nordic seas have shown that warm climatic intervals were short and poorly developed during the late Quaternary (Heinrich and Baumann, 1994; Fronval and Jansen, 1996). A major objective at Sites 907 and 985 was to extend the record back in time and gauge the longer term evolution, particularly of interglacial intervals.
Hole 907A was drilled in August 1993 during Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 151. Plans for further holes at this site were abandoned because of a medical evacuation. Site 907 was reoccupied during Leg 162 when two additional holes (Holes 907B and 907C) were drilled.
Site 985 is located in a deeper part of the Norway Basin, at 2788 m water depth, a depth ~1000 m deeper than that at Site 907 (Fig. 1). In addition to the objectives mentioned above, Site 985, located on Eocene Anomaly 22, was chosen to recover both Neogene and Paleogene sections to monitor the long-term paleoceanographic evolution.