None of this research would have been possible without the dedication and hard work of the crew, marine technicians, and scientific party of Leg 177. We thank Leg 177 scientists for making available to us their published and unpublished results for this synthesis; however, all errors in recitation or integration of individual results are our own. R. Tiedemann and an anonymous reviewer made valuable suggestions for improvement of the manuscript. This research used samples and/or data provided by the Ocean Drilling Project (ODP). ODP is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries under management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), Inc. Preparation of this synthesis chapter was supported by the NSF (Grant OCE-99007036) to D.H. and funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Grant Ge516/6) to R.G.