Benthic Foraminifera counts off NW Africa during the last deglaciation

This data set contains the benthic foraminifera counts of 190 samples off NW Africa. 100 samples come from gravity core GeoB9512-5 (15.33 N, 17.36 W, 793 mbsl), 64 from core GeoB9506-1 (15.61 N, 18.35 W, 2956 mbsl), 9 from core tops of the NE Atlantic (GeoB9506-3, GeoB9508-4, GeoB9535-5, GeoB9534-4, GeoB9529-1, GeoB9532-1, GeoB9533-3, GeoB9512-4, GeoB9510-3) and 17 from core tops of the SE Atlantic (T89-14, T89-16, T89-11, T89-12, T89-15, T89-16, T89-17, T89-19, T89-20, T89-21, T89-22, T89-13, T89-23, T89-24, T89-25, T89-28, T89-47). The samples from the gravity cores were obtained from working and in some cases archive halves with the help of the GeoB Core Collection at the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany. 100 fresh samples from GeoB9512-5 and 31 samples of GeoB9506-1 were (1) washed with deionized water through a 63 µm sieve, then (2) dried for less than 24 hours at 45°C, and (3) dry sieved through 63 µm, 125 µm, 150 µm, and 250 µm. Finally, the washed sediment with a size >150 µm was used to retrieve at least 250 specimens when possible for each sample. The remaining number of analyzed samples from GeoB9506-1 (33 samples) and core tops included in this research were provided by the GeoB Core Repository collection archive and consisted of washed sediments >150 µm. Washed samples from the SE Atlantic were kindly provided by Dr. Enno Schefuss (Scheefuss et al., 2004).