Core sampling at GEOMAR Kiel
On April 8 and 9, 2026, Norbert Nowaczyk and Rahel Paasch from GFZ visited GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany to sample marine sediment core 64PE349-8, which was taken in the Gulf of Sirte, Libya, in 2012 by the crew of the R/V Pelagia.
The 10-meter-long core, which covers about 400 thousand years, had previously been studied to reconstruct hydroclimate changes using high-resolution proxy data. Therefore, it already had a robust age model based on radiocarbon dating and tephra chronology. Based on this age model, we decided to sample for geomagnetic analysis up to a 6-meter core depth, which corresponds to 250 kyr and therefore covers multiple geomagnetic excursions, e.g., the Laschamps (~41 ka) and the Iceland Basin (~190 ka). A total of 236 samples was taken for analysis of multiple magnetic and mineralogical parameters. Analyzing these samples will help constrain the behavior of the Earth’s magnetic field in the past and provide insight into how past climatic changes influenced the magnetic record in areas with sparse data coverage. The ability to take samples from a core off the coast of Libya, where the political situation prohibits further expeditions, demonstrates the importance of analyzing cores stored in repositories that were taken from areas where access is impossible and data coverage is sparse.