The high-latitude South Atlantic Ocean and the adjacent Antarctic Ocean have throughout Mesozoic and Cenozoic time undergone pronounced geographic alterations that have produced a change from a temperate marine climate in the late Mesozoic and Paleogene to a frigid ocean in the Neogene. DSDP Leg 71 was the first of five legs designed to study late Mesozoic and Cenozoic paleoenvironments through the history of sedimentation at the eastern end of the Falkland Plateau, the effect of the plateau as a barrier between water masses during the early opening of the South Atlantic, and the evolution of the Antarctic Convergence.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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.