Hi, students! This is Dr. Pekar, and I am back in Queens, New York, after spending nearly nine weeks in the Atlantic Ocean as part of this amazing expedition. The team recovered hundreds and hundreds of meters of sedimentary and igneous rock cores spanning over 42 million years! That is about two thirds of the way back to the time of the dinosaurs. At that time, the world was much warmer than it is today, and there were no large ice sheets anywhere on Earth.
Remember, this expedition had three big science goals:
This expedition and the entire South Atlantic Transit Project are exceptional as they succeeded in accomplishing all three big science goals. This expedition was the first in obtaining continuous cores in this region of the South Atlantic Ocean. Never before have scientists obtained such samples for all three scientific goals. Truly we have boldly gone where no drilling bit has gone before.
While we observed and collected data during the expedition that we found exciting and intriguing, but most of the new science will take place in the months and years to come.
