Biological communities at the Florida escarpment resemble hydrothermal vent taxa.

Dense biological communities of large epifaunal taxa similar to those found along ridge crest vents at the East Pacific Rise were discovered in the abyssal Gulf of Mexico. These assemblages occur on a passive continental margin at the base of the Florida Escarpment, the interface between the relatively impermeable hemipelagic clays of the distal Mississippi Fan and the jointed Cretaceous limestone of the Florida Platform. The fauna apparently is nourished by sulfide rich hypersaline waters seeping out at near ambient temperatures onto the sea floor.

Laminated diatomaceous sediments from the guaymas basin slope (central gulf of california): 250,000-year climate record.

During Deep Sea Drilling Project-International Program of Ocean Drilling leg 64, December 1978 to January 1979, the initial test of the Deep Sea Drilling Project's hydraulic piston corer obtained an almost undisturbed section from a 152-meter hole into the sediments of the oxygen minimum zone at a depth of 655 meters along the Guaymas slope in the central Gulf of California. The section records variations in climate, productivity, and circulation for more than 250,000 years of Late Pleistocene to Holocene history with recordings of seasonal variations in these parameters in the laminated sections.

Holocene changes in sea level: evidence in micronesia.

Investigation of 33 islands, scattered widely across the Caroline and Marshall Island groups in the Central Pacific revealed no emerged reefs in which corals had unquestionably formed in situ, or other direct evidence of postglacial high stands of sea level. Low unconsolidated rock terraces and ridges of reefflat islands, mostly lying between tide levels, were composed of rubble conglomerates; carbon-14 dating of 11 samples from the conglomerates so far may suggest a former slightly higher sea level (nine samples range between 1890 and 3450 and one approaches 4500 years ago). However, recent hurricanes have produced ridges of comparable height and material, and in the same areas relics from World War II have been found cemented in place. Thus these datings do not in themselves necessarily indicate formerly higher sea levels. Rubble tracts are produced by storms under present conditions without any change in datum, and there seems to be no compelling evidence that they were not so developed during various periods in the past.

Continental margin of Western europe: slope progradation and erosion.

Reflection profiling of the continental margin off western Europe shows seaward-dipping continental-slope deposits that have been dissected by submarine canyons west of the English Channel. These records refute previous interpretation of structural benches of older, nearly horizontal strata outcropping on the slope face.