Sea-marginal environments subject to hypersalinity include a variety of tidal flats and depressions, salt marshes, lagoons, and other physiographic features in which microorganisms thrive. Some of these environments are subject to extreme salinity variations and sometimes complete desiccation. In some cases, they offer the opportunity to study in a single basin the precipitation and diagenesis of a variety of evaporite minerals, and the potential biological and organic chemical interactions with those minerals. In other cases, they offer the opportunity to profile the biogeochemical attributes of a stage in the evolution of an evaporite basin. Both of these approaches are necessary for accurate interpretations of ancient marine evaporite deposits.
