The drill string was lowered to the seafloor with the RCB in the afternoon for a seafloor depth of 528 mbrf.

The plan for hole U1466B is to drill down to 314m and then to RCB core to the 1010 m target .

The sedimentary interval recovered previously consists in dolomitic packstone and wakestone (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_de_Dunham)  from early to middle Miocene. 

Miocene is a particularly interesting epoch, by the cooling started in Oligocene ( just before !!) till the Pliocene ( just after !!).

Plants and animals of the Miocene were pretty modern, with Mammals , Birds… in forests and grasslands. During Miocene the apes diversified and  by its end the ancestors of humans and  chimpanzees had split up.

This epoch is especially interesting too for the geologists and the paleoclimatologists because of the Himalayan orogeny and its impact on the monsoon in Asia and in Indian Ocean.

Miocene is the beginning of the Neogen the stages are :

-Messinian : 7,2- 5,3 ma

-Tortonian: 11,6- 7,2 Ma

-Serravalian: 13,6- 11,6 Ma 

-Langhian: 15,9- 13,6 Ma

-Burdigalian: 20,4- 15,9 Ma

-Aquitanian: 23,03- 20,4 Ma