Introduction | Table of Contents

SCIENTIFIC REPORT

ABSTRACT

Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 188 was drilled based on one of five linked proposals to decipher Cenozoic glacial history and paleoenvironments of Antarctica by drilling transects across the continental margin in five different regions. ODP Leg 178 (Antarctic Peninsula) was the first such proposal to be drilled. Three sites were drilled on Leg 188, with one each on the Prydz Bay continental shelf, slope, and rise. These sites provide records of the transition from East Antarctic preglacial to glacial conditions on the shelf (Site 1166); the variability of onshore erosion areas and glaciomarine depositional settings, during latest Neogene glacial-interglacial periods, on the slope (Site 1167); and the long-term, lower to upper Miocene transition from temperate to cold-climate glaciation, with superimposed short-term glacier fluctuations since early Miocene time (Site 1165). These sites document the paleoenvironments for select periods during Cenozoic and older times as Antarctica transformed from a temperate to polar setting.

Introduction | Table of Contents