Sr isotope stratigraphy provides a new age model for the fi rst complete section drilled through a deep-water coral mound. The 155-m-long section from Challenger Mound in the Porcupine Seabight, southwest of Ireland, is on Miocene siliciclastics and consists entirely of sediments bearing well-preserved cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa. The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values of 28 coral specimens from the mound show an upward-increasing trend, correspond to ages from 2.6 to 0.5 Ma, and identify a signifi cant hiatus from ca. 1.7 to 1.0 Ma at 23.6 m below seafl oor. The age of the basal mound sediments coincides with the intensifi cation of Northern Hemisphere glaciations that set up the modern stratifi cation of the northeast Atlantic and enabled coral growth. Mound growth persisted throughout glacial-interglacial fl uctuations, reached a maximum rate (24 cm/k.y.) ca. 2.0 Ma, and ceased at 1.7 Ma. Unlike other buried mounds in Porcupine Seabight, Challenger Mound was only partly covered during its growth interruption, and growth restarted ca. 1.0 Ma.

Stratigraphic sections across the Cenomanian/Turonian boundary (C/T boundary) are identified in New Zealand and were deposited in southern high latitudes of the palaeo-Pacific.Lithological evidence for Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2), which preceded and spanned the C/T boundary, is lacking in these sections. The correlative interval is identified, however, from a positive 2‰ carbon isotope excursion (CIE) and from clustered highest occurrences of Cenomanian-restricted dinoflagellate taxa together with the lowest occurrence of Turonian Heterosphaeridium difficile. A zone lacking benthic macrofossils encompasses Depositional oxia through Cenomanian-Turonian boundary in New Zealand Hasegawa et al 2 the CIE. In some sections, this interval is also characterized by distinctive red mudstone beds; the thickest such red bed (6-18 m thick) may overlap or just overlie the main part of the CIE interval. Shelly macrobenthos, notably inoceramid bivalves, disappeared >500 kyr prior to the CIE. This suggests that environmental deterioration associated with OAE2 may have preceded the inferred volcanic trigger that has been identified from other regions. Strong intermediate water depth oxia during OAE2, which contrasts with oceanic anoxic conditions that occurred elsewhere on the globe, apparently prevailed during the later phase of OAE2 in the southernmost Pacific. New data from New Zealand indicate that causal mechanism(s) of OAE2 may be complex.

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