Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project - Volume 95

This volume covers Leg 95 of the cruises of the Drilling Vessel Glomar Challenger. The New Jersey margin was chosen as the most suitable location for constructing the first U.S. Atlantic margin-wide stratigraphic transect. As envisioned, the transect would extend from the outcrop belt in central New Jersey to a location 700 km distant on the lower continental rise. Leg 93 began the current phase of drilling on the New Jersey Transect by placing two shallow core sites on the upper continental rise, and established the extreme oceanward end of the transect at Site 603 on the lower rise east of Cape Hatteras. The principal scientific objectives of Leg 95 were to document the Cenozoic and Latest Cretaceous depositional history of the New Jersey continental slope and upper rise. Geological and geophysical analysis of continuously cored strata from these sites would allow us to 1. Establish the composition, stratigraphic framework, and depositional environments of sediments constituting the shelf/rise transition. 2. Accurately date the biostratigraphic gaps and major seismic reflectors (both conformable and unconformable) in the section. 3. Document lateral variability in bio- and lithofacies and compare the facies observed with analogues from the modern slope and rise. 4. Establish paleoenvironmental cycles, detailed biostratigraphic zonations, and stable-isotopic stratigraphy. 5. Calibrate poorly known siliceous planktonic and benthic biozones with the widely applied calcareous micro fossil zonations. 6. Identify depositional sequences and evaluate their relationships with seismic sequences, sea-level changes, tectonism, oceanic current patterns, water-mass composition, and sediment provenance and accumulation rates. 7. Compare and correlate the geological and geophysical record of the slope and upper rise with that of the adjacent shelf and lower rise (especially that at Site 603) and with other passive margins. 8. Determine the detailed subsidence history at Site 612 by "backstripping" techniques and compare the resulting tectonic subsidence with predictions based on thermal and mechanical models for the development of passive margins. Leg 95 began in St. John’s, Newfoundland in August 1983 and ended in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in September 1983.