Salt Dome

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when a thick bed of evaporite minerals (mainly salt, or halite) found at depth intrudes vertically into surrounding rock strata, forming a diapir. The salt that forms these domes was deposited within restricted marine basins. Due to restricted flow of water into a basin, evaporation occurs resulting in the precipitation of salts from solution, depositing evaporites. It is recognised that a single evaporation event is rarely enough to produce the vast quantities of salt found in evaporite deposits indicating that a sustained period of episodic flooding and evaporation of the basin must occur, as can be seen from the example of the Mediterranean Messinian salinity crisis.