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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 30 (1946)

Issue: 11. (November)

First Page: 1965

Last Page: 1966

Title: The Formation of Evaporites under Marine Evaporation Conditions: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Paul Weaver

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

Sediments consisting principally of salt, anhydrite and gypsum, potash, and certain types of limestone and dolomite have a wide areal extent in certain stratigraphic units

End_Page 1965------------------------------

and are as of persistent a character as many other sedimentary deposits. Depositions of these beds occurred in large bodies of water in an environment where evaporation exceeded precipitation and where the temperature and other climatic factors were so controlling that they impressed upon the beds special traits which have continued through subsequent geologic time, and a study of these depositions, therefore, enables us to deduce the paleogeography and paleo-climate by applying physical and chemical tests to the sediments.

The primary purpose of this paper, therefore, is to show the combined use of physics, chemistry, and geology in the understanding of a particular environment, and to stimulate the geologist to the utilization of other scientific data to the better understanding of sedimentary processes. The paper begins with a discussion of the warming of a body of water by solar energy, and the change in evaporation with increase in salinity up to the point where water has been saturated as to one or more compounds, and then the order in which precipitation takes place as to different minerals. Actual sediments containing these precipitates are then discussed in order to show the time involved in their formation and the physiography and climate of the basin in which they were formed. The changes whic take place in these sediments after burial and particularly the ones immediately following deposition, are discussed.

The paper does not go into any detailed sections in any particular salt series, except what may be necessary to demonstrate some particular points, but from the general principles of this type of sedimentation it is believed that geologists, working in areas where there are sediments of this kind, will understand better the particular areas where they are making correlations by subdividing the sediments of this class.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists