The Agulhas Ridge, off the tip of Africa between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, is ideally located to capture the evolution of Paleogene-early Neogene circulation patterns associated with global cooling. Multiproxy records of productivity, nutrient and organic carbon burial, and redox state of deep waters from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 1090 reflect hydrographic shifts in this region between the middle Eocene and early Oligocene. Several peaks in increased export productivity and burial of organic matter occurred within the late Eocene, which along with surface hydrologic conditions favoring opaline organisms over calcareous organisms could have aided in the draw down of pCO (sub 2) to a threshold level that facilitated large ice sheet development on Antarctica in the earliest Oligocene. (mod. journ. abst.)