This data set contains the benthic foraminifera counts of 190 samples off NW Africa. 100 samples come from gravity core GeoB9512-5 (15.33 N, 17.36 W, 793 mbsl), 64 from core GeoB9506-1 (15.61 N, 18.35 W, 2956 mbsl), 9 from core tops of the NE Atlantic (GeoB9506-3, GeoB9508-4, GeoB9535-5, GeoB9534-4, GeoB9529-1, GeoB9532-1, GeoB9533-3, GeoB9512-4, GeoB9510-3) and 17 from core tops of the SE Atlantic (T89-14, T89-16, T89-11, T89-12, T89-15, T89-16, T89-17, T89-19, T89-20, T89-21, T89-22, T89-13, T89-23, T89-24, T89-25, T89-28, T89-47). The samples from the gravity cores were obtained from working and in some cases archive halves with the help of the GeoB Core Collection at the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany. 100 fresh samples from GeoB9512-5 and 31 samples of GeoB9506-1 were (1) washed with deionized water through a 63 µm sieve, then (2) dried for less than 24 hours at 45°C, and (3) dry sieved through 63 µm, 125 µm, 150 µm, and 250 µm. Finally, the washed sediment with a size >150 µm was used to retrieve at least 250 specimens when possible for each sample. The remaining number of analyzed samples from GeoB9506-1 (33 samples) and core tops included in this research were provided by the GeoB Core Repository collection archive and consisted of washed sediments >150 µm. Washed samples from the SE Atlantic were kindly provided by Dr. Enno Schefuss (Scheefuss et al., 2004).Taxonomy identification was made at a genus level based on Loeblich, A. R. and Tappan, H. (1987) and Rönnfeld, W. (2020)), while species identification was based on various references including Brady, H. B. (1884), Van Morkhoven et al. (1986) and Holbourn et al. (2013). A total of 48.297 benthic foraminifera were recovered and analyzed. 238 taxonomical units were identified, including 112 genera and 182 species. The data was used to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions of bottom water during the last deglaciation in the NE Atlantic. The reported microhabitats and oxygen conditions for most species were extracted from various references including Murray (1991), Murray (2006) Kaiho (1994) and Kranner et al. (2022) among others.

The dataset contains the benthic foraminifera counts per identified taxonomical unit for each sample. Known information about microhabitat (I-Infaunal, E-Epifaunal), test composition (C- calcareous, P-porcellaneous, A-agglutinated), oxygen preference (O-oxic, S-suboxic, D-dysoxic), stress species (SS-stress species, NA-does not apply) is included for each species. Funded through the Cluster of Excellence at the MARUM Institute