structural:expansion, information:classification
Geologic drilling

Drill holes have recovered cores of rock from the western edges of the sea. The most ambitious recent efforts are the Cape Roberts Project (CRP) and the ANDRILL project. Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Leg 28 completed several holes (270–273) farther from land in the central and western portions of the sea. These resulted in defining a stratigraphy for most of the older glacial sequences, which comprise Oligocene and younger sediments. The Ross Sea-wide major unconformity RSU-6 has been proposed to mark a global climate event and the first appearance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in the Oligocene.

During 2018, Expedition 374 of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), the latest successor to the DSDP, drilled additional holes (U1521–1525) in the central Ross Sea for determining Neogene and Quaternary ice sheet history.