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Giant late Jurassic sabkhas of Arabian Tethys

Abstract

THE discovery that anhydrite–gypsusm evaporites with characteristic textures are forming today in the shallow subsurface of supratidal coastal sabkhas and in continental sabkhas from Arabia1,2 has revolutionised the interpretation of ancient evaporite sucessions. Several ancient evaporite basins, of great economic importance, lately regarded as former hypersaline lagoons or barred basins, have been recently re-interpreted as the deposits of former prograding sabkha plains3,4. In this note we demonstrate that late-Jurassic evaporitic sulphates and minor chlorides of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Trucial States, Yemen and Aden were deposited on giant sabkhas (>2×106 km2) on the southern margin of the former Tethys Ocean. At their maximum extent in Tithonian times these inferred sabkhas seem to have been among the largest yet discovered. The evaporitic facies throw some light on the evolution of giant sabkha plains. In addition the sabkha plains form the caprocks to some of the world's most prolific oil reservoirs5–7, so that understanding of evaporite genesis is of outstanding economic interest for Middle East stratigraphic studies.

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LEEDER, M., ZEIDAN, R. Giant late Jurassic sabkhas of Arabian Tethys. Nature 268, 42–44 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/268042a0

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