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The paleo oceanography of the southeastern North Atlantic Ocean during the last 150,000 yr has been studied using biogenous and terrigenous components of hemipelagic sediments sampled close to the northwest African continental margin. Late Quaternary planktonic foraminiferal assemblages in the cores can be defined satisfactorily. The downcore record of these estimates reveals two warm periods during the last 150,000 yr, the lower one corresponding to the oxygen isotope state 5e (equivalent to the Eemian proper in Europe), the upper one to the younger half of the Holocene. The enhanced precision of dating combined with the stratigraphic resolution of these high deposition rate cores make it clear that the peaks of the terrigenous input off this part of the northwest African continental margin occur simultaneously with times of rapid sea level fluctuations resulting from large volume changes of the large Glacial ice sheets.