Between 5 and 6 million years ago, during the so-called Messinian salinity crisis, the Mediterranean basin became a giant salt repository. The possibility of abrupt and kilometre-scale sea-level changes during this extreme event is debated. Messinian evaporites could signify either deep- or shallow-marine deposits, and ubiquitous erosional surfaces could indicate either subaerial or submarine f...

Carbonates from approximately 2.3-2.1 billion years ago show markedly positive δ(13)C values commonly reaching and sometimes exceeding +10‰. Traditional interpretation of these positive δ(13)C values favors greatly enhanced organic carbon burial on a global scale, although other researchers have invoked widespread methanogenesis within the sediments. To resolve between these competing models an...

The MER rover Opportunity has carried out the first outcrop-scale investigation of ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars. The rocks, exposed in craters and along fissures in Meridiani Planum, are sandstones formed via the erosion and re-deposition of fine grained siliciclastics and evaporites derived from the chemical weathering of olivine basalts by acidic waters. A stratigraphic section more than...

Six soil pedons were selected, represented by the governorates of Salah al-Din and Najaf, distributed as three for each governorate located within a study path them according to geological formation, their physiographic location accompanying difference in sedimentation conditions resulting from different sources parent material. The results mineral examinations showed predominance light mineral...

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) data for the last 420 million years (My) show long-term fluctuations related to supercontinent cycles as well as shorter cycles at 26 to 32 My whose origin is unknown. Periodicities of 26 to 30 My occur in diverse geological phenomena including mass extinctions, flood basalt volcanism, ocean anoxic events, deposition of massive evaporites, sequence boundaries, a...

A high density of local natural and human-induced ground deformation 11 structures resulting from the presence of evaporites occur extensively 12 around Zaragoza (NE Spain), posing risks to infrastructures, buildings and 13 agriculture. We studied the potential of a series of interferograms 14 constructed from 29 ERS -1/2 images to detect different types of ground 15 deformation related to evap...

Understanding the coupling of oxygen, carbon, and sulfur cycles in the past is critical for reconstructing the history of biogeochemical cycles, paleoclimatic variations, and oceanic chemistry. The abundance of sulfur isotopes (dS) in sulfate from ancient marine carbonates, or carbonate-associated sulfate (CAS), is commonly used, along with other archives (mainly evaporites and barite), to esti...

Abstract The present study deals with diagenesis and dolomitization modeling of Middle Miocene – Quaternary sedimentary sequence outcropped at Ras Banas Peninsula, Egyptian Red Sea Coast. This is comprising successively overlapped clastics, carbonates, evaporites attaining 254 m total thickness resting on the Pre-Cambrian basement rocks in Peninsula. Diagenetic history were carefully investigat...