The Ras Muhammad Pool: Implications for the Gavish Sabkha

Abstract

Both thick and widespread, stromatolites in the rock record testify to the existence of ancient peritidal flat terrains that were far more extensive than today. Not only are stromatolitic strata widespread, they are also economically important because of their association with resources of hydrocarbons and minerals (especially lead and zinc). Stromatolites formed in peritidal environments where microbial mats flourished and led to the formation of laminated carbonates (often dolomitized); evaporites commonly formed and sometimes survived as interlayers. The broad shallow epicontinental seas of the geologic past provided vast areas of such hypersaline peritidal environments; today only in a few restricted areas do similar environments exist. Studies of these modern hypersaline microbial mat environments lead to a better understanding of the vast body of ancient stromatolitic strata. For this purpose, previous studies of modern periti-dal environments in arid climates were carried out in the Persian Gulf (Kinsman 1964, 1966, Kendall and Skipwith 1969, Purser and Evans 1973, Purser and Seibold 1973), in Shark Bay, Australia (Logan and Cebulski 1970, Davies 1970 a, b) and the Solar Lake Sinai (G. M. Friedman et al. 1973 a, Krumbein et al. 1977).