ABSTRACT
The study of three cores sampled in the Scotia Sea allows to determine the processes of recent Quaternary sedimentation and to give its mineralogical and geochemical features. Three sources of unequal proportions appear depending on the location of the cores:
a continental source of which the chemism goes from the acid pole to the basic pole; it supplies a coarse-grained quartz-feldspar phase and clay minerals of chlorite-illite type. This source was determined from the study of a variety of ice-rafted lithoc lasts ;
a volcanic source, not too abundant, except in the clay phase characterized by smectites, and the trace element assemblages;
a siliceous biogenous source, sometimes very abundant, composed of radiolaria and diatoms.
