Deep Sea Drilling Project

The Deep Sea Drilling Project was a U.S.-led ocean research program that began in 1968 and cored seabed sediments to investigate ocean basins and test seafloor spreading.

Glomar Challenger: A deep-sea drilling vessel built for the Deep Sea Drilling Project and operated from 1968 to 1983. The ship carried the project’s drilling equipment and recovered its landmark cores.
Project Mohole: A 1950s–1960s American effort to drill through oceanic crust into Earth’s mantle. Its experiments and ambitions helped establish the feasibility of scientific ocean drilling.
Plate tectonics: The theory that Earth’s lithosphere is divided into moving plates whose interactions shape the planet’s surface. The project’s age results provided evidence for a central mechanism within this theory.
DSDP Leg 3: A 1969 Deep Sea Drilling Project expedition that drilled across the South Atlantic Ocean. Its cores found sediment ages increasing away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, supporting seafloor spreading.
Deep-sea drilling: The extraction of rock and sediment cores from beneath the ocean floor using specialized drilling vessels. The project was a major scientific application of this drilling method.
National Science Foundation: A U.S. federal agency that supports research and education across science and engineering. The foundation sponsored the project and oversaw its scientific program.
Age of the ocean floor: The time elapsed since a piece of oceanic crust formed, generally increasing with distance from a spreading ridge. Drilled sediments showed that oceanic crust is geologically young and youngest near ridges.
DSDP Leg 17: A 1971 Deep Sea Drilling Project expedition to the Pacific Ocean and its margins. Its sites extended drilling evidence into the Pacific basin and addressed ocean-floor history there.
Ocean drilling core: A cylindrical sample of sediment or rock recovered by drilling beneath the seafloor. Cores preserved the layered material used to establish the age of ocean sediments.
JOIDES: The Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling, a consortium that organized scientific ocean drilling. JOIDES developed the scientific and institutional framework for the project.

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