Criteria for the recognition of salt‐pan evaporites

ABSTRACT Layered evaporites can accumulate in: (1) ephemeral saline pans, (2) shallow perennial lagoons or lakes, and (3) deep perennial basins. Criteria for recognizing evaporites deposited in these settings have yet to be explicitly formulated. The characteristics of the ephemeral saline pan setting have been determined by examining eight. Holocene halite‐dominated pans (salt pans) and their deposits (marine and non‐marine) from the U.S., Mexico, Egypt and Bolivia. These salt pans are typified by alternating periods of flooding, resulting in a temporary brackish lake, evaporative concentration, when the lake becomes saline, and desiccation, which produces a dry pan fed only by groundwater. The resulting deposits consist of alternating layers (millimetres to decimetres) of halite and mud. The layers of halite are characterized by: (1) vertical and horizontal cavities, rounded crystal edges and horizontal truncation surfaces, due to dissolution during flooding; (2) vertical ‘chevrons’ and ‘cornets’ grown syntaxially on the bottom during the saline lake stage; (3) halite cements (overgrowths and euhedral cavity linings) and disruption of layering into metre‐scale polygons, produced during the desiccation stage. The muddy interbeds are characterized by displacive growth of halite during the desiccation stage. Immediately below the surface of the pan the halite layers are ‘matured’ by repeated episodes of dissolution and diagenetic crystal growth. This results in porous crusts with patches of ‘chevron’ and ‘cornet’ crystals truncated by dissolution, clear diagenetic halite cement, and internal sediment. These layers of ‘mature’ halite closely resemble the patchy cloudy and clear textures of ancient halite deposits. Holocene salt‐pans are known to cover thousands of square kilometres and cap halite deposits hundreds of metres thick, so they are realistic models for ancient evaporites in scale, e.g. Permian Salado Formation of New Mexico‐Texas, which preserves many primary salt‐pan features.