Abstract Geologic collections play a fundamental role in advancing scientific discoveries, offering rich global archives reaching deep into Earth's past. Realizing the scientific potential of these remarkable resources will require the generation and curation of usable data to facilitate open science and data synthesis efforts. Although core scanners offer an efficient, nondestructive way to acquire cm‐resolution data sets on archived cores, material properties may have been altered over time, making comparisons difficult. To assess the promise of core‐scanner measurements to support studies using decades‐old cores, we scanned the 1961 Project Mohole cores, which were the first cores obtained by deep‐water scientific ocean drilling. We examined cores from the Experimental Mohole Guadalupe site with new X‐ray fluorescence, magnetic susceptibility, and line scan camera measurements, and used the new data to re‐evaluate measurements made up to 64 years ago. We show that new measurements can validate and enhance the original analyses performed on the cores, and that even cores from the dawn of scientific ocean drilling retain valuable information waiting to be retrieved.
Morris et al. (Sun,) studied this question.