One of the most important geologic discoveries of the 1960s was the remarkable uniformity of the basalts produced at mid-ocean ridges. These basalts have a markedly different tholeiitic composition compared to the alkalic basalts from ocean islands. But very little is known about temporal variations in the composition of basalts derived from one or several mantle sources associated with both normal and anomalously shallow sections of the mid-ocean ridges. The strategy for drilling on DSDP Leg 82 was to set up a broad grid encompassing all possible drilling sites west and southwest of the present Azores Triple Junction in order to investigate these problems.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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