The Mississippi River discharge effectively shaped the dynamics of the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico during transient climates and interglacials, and reacted in response to changes in sea level and atmospheric circulation. We here provide proxydata records from piston core M78/1-181-3 PC. The ~12 m-long core was recovered from the Mississippi Alabama shelf very close to and southeast of the recent Mississippi delta (29°00.00'N 88°20.00'W) from 804 m water depth during R/V Meteor Cruise M78/1 in 2009 (doi:10.2312/cr_m78_1). The proxyrecords cover the last ~42 kyrs at centennial resolution. This dataset contains element concentrations of bulk sediment. Sediment geochemical analyses were accomplished via sequential wavelength dispersive Philips PW2400 bulk-XRF spectrometry at IFM-GEOMAR. Sampling and analytical studies were carried out from 10 cm to ~1180 cm core depth at large spatial resolution with the intention to calibrate XRF-scanner dataseries (c.f. Kujau et al., 2010).