Orphan Knoll is a pronounced submarine feature at the foot of the continental rise and bounded on its northeast side by the 4000-meter deep abyssal plain of the Labrador Basin. It lies isolated on the ocean floor some 550 kilometers northeast of Newfoundland and 350 kilometers north of Flemish Cape. The DSDP drilling site 111 was originally chosen by the Atlantic Advisory Panel on the basis of Charcot's Flexotir continuous seismic profile provided by CNEXO.

From 1983 until 1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions. At the time it was the most extended data compilation on ferromanganese deposits world wide. Initially published in a proprietary format incompatible with present day standards it was jointly decided by AWI and NOAA to transcribe this legacy data into PANGAEA. This transfer is augmented by a careful checking of the original sources when available and the encoding of ancillary information (sample description, method of analysis...) not present in the NOAA-MMS database.

Supplement to: Laughton, Anthony S; Berggren, William A; Benson, Richard N; Davies, Thomas A; Franz, A; Musich, L F; Perch-Nielsen, Katharina; Ruffman, A; van Hinte, Jan E; Whitmarsh, Robert B (1972): Site 111. In: Laughton, A.S.; Berggren, W.A.; et al., Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, U.S. Government Printing Office, XII, 33-159