This text offers a general introduction to the geological history of the North-Tethys Platform from the Malm to the Lower Eocene periods. It is followed by three parts: a sedimentology development, a geochemical study and a part devoted to the reconstitution of the environment and the sedimentation rates, the subsidence, the depth and the morphology of the seabed and therefore the paleogeography of the Briançonnais domain. The last two chapters deal, one with the evolution of the Briançonnais domain in the context of events affecting Western Tethys and the Central Atlantic, and the other with two sedimentation models deduced from the previous study.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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: Bourbon, Maurice (1980): Evolution d'un secteur de la marge nord-téthysienne en milieu pélagique: la zone briançonnaise près de Briançon entre le début du Malm et l'Eocène inférieur = Evolution of a sector of the pelagic environment of the North-Tethyan Platform in the Briançon area between the Malm and lower Eocene periods. Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, 2 volumes, 580 pp