…these are mostly blanketed by carbonate oozes, a biogenic ooze made up of skeletal debris. Carbonate oozes cover about half of the world’s seafloor and are present chiefly above a depth of 4,500 metres (about 14,800 feet); below that they dissolve quickly. In the Atlantic basin the CCD is 500…

…oozes are subdivided first into calcareous oozes (containing skeletons made of calcium carbonate) and siliceous oozes (containing skeletons made of silica) and then are divided again according to the predominant skeleton type. Thus, the calcareous oozes include globigerina ooze, containing the shells of planktonic foraminifera, and pteropod ooze, made up…

…up of either carbonate (or calcareous) ooze or siliceous ooze. The skeletal material in carbonate oozes is calcium carbonate usually in the form of the mineral calcite but sometimes aragonite. The most common contributors to the skeletal debris are such microorganisms as foraminiferans and coccoliths, microscopic carbonate plates that coat…

An estimated 10¹⁶ tons of calcareous oozes, formed by the deposition of calcareous shells and skeletons of planktonic organisms, cover some 130 million square km (50 million square miles) of the ocean floor. In a few instances these oozes, which occur within a few hundred kilometres of most countries bordering…

…Atlantic is covered with calcareous ooze. At depths greater than 16,400 feet (5,000 metres), the calcium carbonate content decreases, and the calcareous deposits give way to red clay. The finer material is not evident on submarine ridges, and the shells of pteropod gastropods (mollusks of the gastropod class comprising the…

Calcareous globigerina ooze occurs in the shallower parts of the South Pacific, the dissolving power of the seawater at great depths being sufficient to dissolve calcareous material to such an extent that these oozes are not generally found at depths in excess of about 15,000…