Core & Rock repository

The GEOMAR core and rock repositories hold an extensive collection of marine sediment cores and rock samples.

The majority of the samples is collected during ship expeditions to the world’s oceans, including epicontinental seas like North and Baltic Sea, Mediterranean, Black Sea, Laptev Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, Bering Sea, Red Sea, Caribbean and also the Arctic and Antarctic seas. The oldest cores of the collection are taken in 1964 in the coastal region of Egypt. Land samples come from Germany, France, central and southern Americas, Iceland, Canary Islands, Kamtchatka, Namibia and from land expeditions affiliated to ship expeditions.

Information about the sample material, including meta data, is provided via the data bases OSIS and PANGAEA for further research. An overview of all research cruises and projects collecting sediment cores is provided by  OSIS/Core Repository. The sample collection is available to the international research community, subject to current research projects. Please direct sample requests to the curator.

In the newly built core storage (Zentrales Probenlager ZPL), our marine sediment core collection totaling a length of roughly 24.000 core meters is kept. This includes 5.000 m of core material from the Red Sea, the former PREUSSAG-collection. Storage conditions are +4°C in customised lattice boxes.

The completed ZPL with its 950 m² will offer storage space for sediment cores and for other specimen requiring cooling. For freeze samples (-30°C) two walk-in compartments are integrated within the building. In the entrance area a core preparation and sampling laboratory, an office and a warehouse for expedition equipment complete the infrastructure of the ZPL.

In the three-storey shelf complex, to date 4700 plastic boxes are archived. They contain

• Hard rock
• Soft rock
• Pore water samples
• Radiographs
• Foraminifera collections
• Corals, Bivalves
• Manganese nodules and ore samples
• Prepared material like mineral separates, sieve fractions, thin sections and reserve samples

Storage is under ambient conditions.