Bottom sampling at forty-one stations in the shallow waters of the southeast Scotian Shelf (lat. 43 °21 125", long. 63°39 10011 -65°45' 3011 ) was carried out during June and July 1961. Littoral and neritic bottom samples were taken at stations up to 12 miles offshore, in waters up to 150 metres deep . Shallow-water foraminifera did not show a direct relationship to depth or substrate. Salinity, either by itself or in combination with other factors, is directly related to distribution of brackish-water foraminifera. Calcareous species greatly exceeded arenaceous species at most sampling stations. Percentages of pelagic species increased with depth. Most shallowwater benthonic species are indigenous, but the majority of deeperwater benthonic forms indicate transportation or reworking or both. Ninety per cent of more than one hundred species examined are related to Arctic foraminifera previously described . No new species are established. Grouping of species, because of general morphological similarities, was initiated.

Deep sea carbonate lithification and the interbedding of carbonate and ferromanganese are common processes on oceanic ridges and seamounts. Temperature and salinity changes caused by climatic fluctuations or heat emanations and manganese substitution for calcium in the calcite lattice along these ridges are believed to be responsible for these inorganic processes. Lithification and solution of the carbonate take place at the sediment–water interface and can occur in ocean depths of at least 3 000 m.

Foraminifera have been utilized to interpret the response of waters in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to climatic changes during the Holocene. Sediment cores (up to 1000 cm long) from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and environs, are characterized throughout by meager foraminiferal faunas. The microfaunas are characteristic of marginal marine environments and are typified by low foraminiferal numbers (less than 300 and generally less than 100 per unit sample), few genera and species, and hyposaline, shallow-water assemblages. The microfaunal information indicates that marine waters were more brackish and much shallower during the latter stages, and immediately following the Wisconsin glaciation. Shallow-water foraminiferal species such as Elphidium incertum clavatum, Islandiella islandica, and I. teretis are commonly the first to inhabit cool temperate to northern environments after glacial retreat. Consequently, because of the absence of deep water marine microfaunas it is believed that many areas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence were at least 100 to 200 m shallower than at present.The Holocene history of the area is one of transition from a rapidly fluctuating brackish water environment, to one which is more consistent with the present environment. The presence of Globigerinoides ruber (pink), a species commonly associated with subtropical waters, intermixed with the eurybathic benthonic fauna, indicates distinctive lateral and vertical water-mass zonation in a restricted geographic area. Warm water incursions into the Gulf of St. Lawrence from the Gulf Stream, which contained the subtropical foraminiferal species Globigerinoides ruber and Globorotalia menardii, were intermittent, whereas a persistent cold-water marine influence from the Arctic via the Labrador Current is indicated by the presence of Globigerina pachyderma. The adjoining Scotian Shelf faunas, alternating from sparse, to prolific and diverse, during the Holocene, suggest that conditions there were not significantly different from those in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.Extremely brackish and/or shallower waters were present in most of the western Laurentian Channel and shelf waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence until recently (< 6400 ± 130 yr B.P.). The baymouth bars, persistent features restricting circulation with most bays, estuaries, and lagoons adjoining Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick were established between 4540 ± 180 and 2235 ± 155 yr B.P. Sediments containing subtropic and arctic planktonic species, alternating with eurythermal benthonic species, are indicative of environmental extremes throughout the Holocene. It is believed that many of these marine fluctuations were neither recorded nor preserved in adjoining continental sediments of equivalent age.

Two wells drilled by Pan American in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland gave the first stratigraphic section of Cretaceous and Cenozoic age northeast of Long Island and the only Jurassic and possible Permian sections in the Atlantic Continental Margin of North America.Integrated analysis of lithic and faunal data showed a minimum of seven sequences present. These are Pleistocene, Middle and Upper Miocene, Intra-Eocene, Paleocene and lowest Eocene, Upper Cretaceous, Middle Cretaceous, and Neocomian in age.The rocks range from halite and anhydrite, of possible Permian depositional age, to limestones, in the Upper Jurassic, lower Upper Cretaceous, mid-Eocene and mid-Miocene, and sandstones, which dominate the Neocomian, Upper Eocene, and Middle Miocene. Variable proportions of shale and silty mudstone occur throughout.The microfaunas contain both Tethyan and Boreal elements, and suggest oceanic circulation changes, sea-floor spreading, or both.Depositional environments ranged from subaerial, for the quartz arenites, through very low-land, for stream and swamp deposits, to estuarine, lagoonal, bank and open-shelf warm-marine environments, in which were deposited fine sand to clay-size terrigenous sediment, or, in its absence, skeletal carbonates or lime muds. The first dominant cooling trend appeared in the Late Miocene.All erosional environments of the hiatal episodes appear to have been subaerial and humid.A salt dome intruded the Tors Cove well section, its last movement being in mid-Early Eocene.Periodic interregional tectonic oscillations produced the erosional and depositional episodes of the major baselevel transit cycles. Their total effect is a sedimentary wedge, thickening by preservation toward the continent's edge, and representing one-half or less of Upper Mesozoic and Cenozoic time.

Morphologic characteristics related to ecology and evolutionary sequences, and to specific, generic, and familial relations, can now be determined with the scanning electron microscope. These detailed characteristics will help to establish a more natural faunal classification and will enable more accurate ecologic and biostratigraphic correlations.