Obtaining long, continuous, and undisturbed sections of unconsolidated Neogene deep sea sedimentary sections has been limited by (1) practical length of piston cores to about 30 meters and (2) disturbance of sediment by rotary drilling with Glomar Challenger. The relatively high deposition rates of late Neogene sediments in the North Atlantic and in the Caribbean in particular has limited penetration, with conventional piston coring, to sediments not much older than late Pliocene in the Atlantic and not even through the late Pleistocene in the Caribbean. Rotary drilling has penetrated much older sediments in both areas, but the cores suffered extensive drilling disturbance that seriously degrades the Paleomagnetism of the material. Utilization of the hydraulic piston corer on the Challenger combines the advantage of a generally undisturbed recovery and great penetration to produce long, relatively undisturbed sections of late Neogene and Quaternary sediments suitable for paleomagnetic studies. In this chapter we present paleomagnetic data from Site 502. We tried to determine relative azimuthal orientation of successive cores (see Introduction for details). Because the low latitude of the site meant a small (inclination of about 22°) vertical component of magnetization, reversals of magnetization could easily be detected only in changes in the horizontal component, as 180° shifts in the declination direction of magnetization. Based on information from the core orienting device, a fiducial line was drawn the length of each core prior to cutting it into the standard 1.5 meter sections.

Supplement to: Kent, Dennis V; Spariosu, Dann J (1982): Magnetostratigraphy of Caribbean site 502 hydraulic piston cores. In: Prell, WL; Gardner, JV; et al. (eds.), Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (U.S. Govt. Printing Office), 68, 419-733