Crystals of highly soluble evaporit

Crystals of highly soluble evaporitic minerals, such as halite, are sporadically preserved in clastic or calcareous sediments because of their low preservation potential. Their pseudomorphs, filled with calcite, dolomite or silica are more common (e.g., Staples, 1950; Handford and Moore, 1976; Álvaro et al., 2000; Gandin et al., 2005; Martill et al., 2007; Leitner et al., 2013), while casts of crystals are relatively rare. The casts of halite crystals have been described among others from the Cambrian Aretomy Formation of the Canadian Rocky Mountains (Demicco and Hardie, 1994), the Silurian Wills Creek Formation of the central Appalachians (Demicco and Hardie, 1994), the Lower Triassic Moenkopi Formation of the Little Colorado River valley, U.S.A. (McKee, 1954), the Upper Triassic of the Lorraine region (Plaziat and Desprairies, 1969), and the Oligocene of the Southern Pyrenees (De Raaf, 1964). Casts or pseudomorphs of halite crystals are unequivocal indicators of evaporitic conditions in a sedimentary environment, but they are usually poorly preserved in host sediments because of the high solubility of halite. Growth and dissolution of halite or other evaporates during early diagenesis resulted in the disturbance or even