Evaporites; marine or non-marine?

Abstract

Division of evaporites into those types that retain information about primary mineralogy, textures, and structures (primary evaporites) and those types so extensively altered that few or no primary features remain (secondary evaporites). Only primary evaporites can give unequivocal data bout their marine or non-marine origin. To help evaluate such primary deposits they have been further divided using the following attributes: (1) whether the depositional setting was marine or non-marine; (2) whether the source water was (A) seawater, (B) meteoric, (C) hydrothermal, (D) diagenetic, (E) volcanogenic, or (F) mixed. Specific criteria for making distinctions are: (1) kinds of fossils, (2) sedimentology of the associated non-saline facies, (3) kinds of primary saline minerals, (4) association of such saline minerals, both in qualitative and quantitative terms, (5) trace element, isotope, and fluid inclusion geochemistry of such saline minerals.--Modified journal abstract.