Evaporite deposit
Ore deposit
Where an enclosed sea or lake in a dry land loses more water to the air than it receives, the salts left behind crystallise in a set order: carbonates first, then gypsum and anhydrite, then halite, then the potash salts. Beds can be hundreds of metres thick.
- Where
- Hot Desert
- Rocks
- Rock salt, Rock gypsum
- Minerals
- Halite, Sylvite, Gypsum, Anhydrite, Carnallite, Sulfur, Selenite, Dolomite, Celestine, Danburite
- Metals
- Magnesium
- Worked
- Before and since the industrial age
- Examples
- Hallstatt, Austria, salt mined since prehistory; Wieliczka, Poland, mined from the thirteenth century to 1996; Dead Sea and Death Valley, forming today
Sources
Browse the Crystal Encyclopedia — MGS Toolbox