The goal of Site 462 was to study the paleontologic, sedimentary, petrologic, tectonic, and magnetic histories of that area through Recent to Late Jurassic time by drilling a deep re-entry site into the Nauru Basin west of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. This area formed at a fast-spreading Pacific Plate boundary 145 to 155 m.y. ago, in the Late Jurassic. Cores from this area allow to better understand the biostratigraphic evolution and sedimentary processes in a Mesozoic open-ocean environment, the petrologic nature of fast-spreading oceanic crust, the tectonic history of the Late Jurassic Pacific Plate, and the nature of the Jurassic magnetic quiet zone.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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: Windom, Ken; Vallier, Tracy L; Tokuyama, Hidekazu; Thierstein, Hans R; Thiede, Jörn; Steiner, Maureen B; Sliter, William V; Shcheka, S A; Seifert, Karl E; Sayer, William O; Riech, Volkher; Rea, David K; Premoli Silva, Isabella; Moberly, Ralph; Koporulin, V I; Jenkyns, Hugh C; Fujii, Naoyuki; de Wever, Patrick; Cepek, Pavel; Boyce, Robert E; Batiza, Rodey; Larson, Roger L; Schlanger, Seymour O (1981): Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project. Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, U.S. Government Printing Office, LXI, 885 pp