Representatives of eleven microfossil groups were recovered from seven sites drilled during Leg 151 of the Ocean Drilling Program. These include planktonic and benthic foraminifers, calcareous nannofossils, ostracodes, diatoms, radiolarians, silicoflagellates, ebridians, actiniscidians, dinoflagellates and other palynomorphs (e.g., pollen and spores). Summaries of the biostratigraphic contributions presented in this volume are combined with shipboard reports to produce a synopsis of the biostratigraphic framework and chronostratigraphy for each site drilled on Leg 151. Over 75% of the 3000 m of recovered material is Neogene in age; Quaternary and Pliocene sediments were recovered at all seven sited, and constitute the entire sequences drilled on the Yermak Plateau. Miocene sediments were recovered from four sites: (1) a middle to upper Miocene sequence in the southern portion of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea at Site 907 on the Iceland Plateau; (2) a short upper Miocene sequence overlying an unconformity on the Hovgård Ridge at Site 908 in the Fram Strait; (3) a very thick sequence (over 700 m) of lower?/middle to upper Miocene dinoflagellate-rich sediments at Site 909, adjacent to Site 908; and (4) a wash core taken at Site 913 on the East Greenland Margin with middle to upper Miocene sediments in the western portion of the basin. Short sequences of Paleogene sediment were recovered from two sites, Site 908 (late early to early late Oligocene) on the Hovgård Ridge (Fram Strait) and Site 913 (early Eocene to earliest Oligocene) on the East Greenland Margin.

Date of initial receipt: 17 January 1996
Date of acceptance: 17 May 1996

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