Data file : sediments of the East Atlantic continental margin, northwest Africa : sample collection and analysis

Abstract

The petrology, provenance, and history of sediments from the continental shelf and upper continental slope of western Africa have been studied in some detail by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as part of a long-term investigation of the marine geology of the Eastern Atlantic Continental Margin (funded by the National Science Foundation through the Office of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration in a grant to Dr. K.O. Emery- GX-28193). In this data file we present the analytical data and other information relating to all of the readily available samples (1178) of sediment from northwestern Africa (off the coasts of Morocco and what was recently called Spanish Sahara). These data have been described and interpreted in a recent article in the scientific literature (Summerhayes and others, 1976). The data file contains sample locations, shipboard descriptions, size data, sand fraction composition, clay mineral composition, carbonate assemblage, and carbonate, nitrogen, and carbon contents. The object of the data file is to make these data readily available to other research groups interested in African margin sediments.