We characterized the microfacies of sediments encountered dunng Leg 44 on the basis of coarse fraction mineralogy ( sup 125 m), silt mineralogy (63 inf inf 20 m), clay mineralogy ( inf 2 m), silt and clay particle size distributions, and calcium carbonate contents. Secondly we attempted to tentatively correlate microfacies changes with major oceanographic events which have affected the sedimentary processes along the continental margin of North America.Because part of the stratigraphic column was not recovered (no Pliocene and Oligocene, and reduced Pleistocene and Barremian sections), and because of the fairly large sampling intervals our results are far from complete and exhaustive.Some important results, however, concerning the evolution of the oceans since Barremian time were obtained. [NOT CONTROLLED OCR]