The single "raison d'être" for selecting Site 126 was to explore the pre-evaporite history of the eastern Mediterranean and hopefully to establish the paleoenvironment which preceded the Late Miocene salinity crisis. The selcetd site is in a deep cleft in the Mediterranean Ridge in the central Ionian Sea, a cleft that cuts more than 250 meters below the level of Horizon M and at the same time is floored by flat-lying sediments. A secondary objective of the cleft site-selection was to ascertain what kind of sediment makes up the horizontal fill and hopefully to determine some details of the history and mechanics of the depression-filling process.

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1989 NOAA-NCEI compiled the NOAA-MMS Marine Minerals Geochemical Database from journal articles, technical reports and unpublished sources from other institutions.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

Supplement to: Ryan, William B F; Hsü, Kenneth J; Cita, Maria Bianca; Dumitrica, Paulian; Llort, Jennifer; Maync, Wolf; Nesteroff, Wladimir D; Pautot, Guy; Stradner, Herbert; Wezel, Forese C (1973): Site 126. In: Ryan, W.B.F.; Hsu, K.J.; et al., Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, U.S. Government Printing Office, XIII, 219-241