The rock magnetic properties of marine sediments from the California continental borderland (San Pedro, Santa Catalina, and San Nicolas basins) have been studied in order to quantitatively assess the effects of sediment diagenesis on magnetic minerals. Previous studies have noted that the natural remanent magnetization in these sediments, primarily carried by detrital magnetite, decays to 10% or less of its surface value soon after deposition. This decrease is caused by magnetite dissolution related to sediment diagenesis and is unrelated to paleoclimatic variations or changes in the regional influx of detrital magnetic material. Detailed rock magnetic measurements show that shifts to softer remanent coercivity and differences in the rate and degree of magnetic intensity loss with depth can be related to the dissolution process. The shift to softer remanent coercivity is related to a coarsening of the magnetic mineral grain sizes with depth due to preferential dissolution of the finest-grained magnetic material. The intensity decreases, which are linearly proportional to magnetite concentration decreases, indicate that dissolution occurs with rate constants ranging from 0.3 to 1.6 kyr-1. The rate constants, sulfide concentrations, and magnetite grain size estimates from the borderland are consistant with previous studies of magnetite dissolution. Our results demonstrate the importance of both sulfide and magnetite surface area in the dissolution process. Anomalous peaks in viscous remanence within the sediments suggest the authigenic growth of greigite and its subsequent transformation to pyrite. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1990