Research currently being conducted by the Sedimentology and Marine Geology Group, under Brian W. Logan at the University of Western Australia, has recently concentrated on Lake MacLeod, a 2,000 km² (770 mi²) coastal salina on the western coast of Australia. This work has shown that this evaporite basin, which is 3 to 4 m (10 to 13 ft) below sea level, is separated from the Indian Ocean by a topographic barrier, but seawater under hydrostatic head, seeps freely through the barrier and discharges from several vents and springs in a carbonate mud flat at the north end of the basin. From there, seawater flows slowly across the basin, evaporating and depositing carbonate, gypsum, and ephemeral halite. About 10 to 12 m (33 to 39 ft) of evaporites have been deposited in the past 5,300 years.

In July 1982, the authors visited the carbonate mud flats and discovered abundant aragonite pisolites and botryoidal-mammillary crusts of fibrous aragonite cement beneath "lily-pad" tepee slabs of cemented protodolomite. This protodolomite host-rock is well-lithified, intraclast, peloid packstone with abundant coarse fenestrae. Thick aragonite crusts cover both the undersides of "lily-pad" slabs and the lithified floors of tepees. Crusts covering the floors are more botryoidal and consist of both aragonite nubs and mounds (0.2 to 2.5 cm, 0.08 to 1 in., in diameter), and a few scattered, loose pisolites, several millimeters in diameter. Pisolites are composed of multi-generation fibrous layers of square-tipped aragonite rays surrounding peloid-intraclast nuclei. Thus, it seems that per odic deposition of a fine layer of carbonate mud, peloids, and intraclasts across the floor of a tepee is a prerequisite to pisolite growth.

Stable isotope analysis of the host rock and aragonite cements gave expected marine values (^dgr¹⁸O = +0.25 to +1.14 PDB and ^dgr¹³C = -0.18 to +0.16 PDB) and reflect precipitation from ground water (marine composition) discharging from seeps in the carbonate mud flats.

The manner in which crusts, pisolites, and tepees occur at Lake MacLeod raises the possibility that they and their ancient counterparts from the Permian basin share a common origin. Perhaps Permian pisolites and aragonite crusts formed beneath cemented slabs of peritidal sediments in tepees bathed by marine water which seeped across exposed portions of the shelf crest.

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