The major objectives of Leg 176 were to recover a representative section of gabbroic Layer 3 and determine its lithologic variation with depth. The operational goal was drilling to 1.5 km mbsf, with the hope that this would be deep enough to penetrate the crust/mantle boundary. Leg 176 met the operational goal and achieved the objective of obtaining a representative long section of the lower crust. The three to four intrusions drilled during Leg 176, however, are geochemically less primitive than those drilled in the upper 500 m of Hole 735B, and unlike the case at many ophiolites, no thick layered gabbro sequences were recognized. The absence of such features, which are often associated with the base of the crust in many ophiolites, suggests that we may still be relatively high in the section. Alternatively, there may be little layered gabbro at the base of the crust here. The extent to which Hole 735B is representative of the igneous lower crust, then, depends on the evidence, discussed earlier, that the crust at Atlantis Bank is relatively thin, around 2 km, and the degree to which it has not been disrupted. With respect to the latter, the remarkably uniform magnetic inclination with depth and the systematic changes in the degree of alteration, nature of deformation, and rock chemistry described below all indicate that the section is not seriously disrupted or imbricated. Moreover, at the bottom of the hole during Leg 176, despite the less-primitive chemistry, we encountered rapidly increasing olivine contents and coarse troctolitic gabbros, which again raised hopes that we were near a major change in lithology, and perhaps were close to the crust/mantle boundary.