Phreatic cave sediments in Oman Caves continue to receive attention by the research community, as repositories of carbonate deposits-in the form of stalagmites, stalactites and flowstones-that act as 'archives of global climate change'. Such deposits are a function of the precipitation of carbonate from vadose waters (waters between the surface and the water saturated zone) in meteoric caves. While these deposits have received their fair share of study, other caves, formed by hydrothermal waters and containing phreatic deposits (precipitated in the water saturated zone), have been neglected, according to a new study by Adrian Immenhauser and four other authors (Journal of Sedimentary Research, 2007, v.77, pp.68-88). Studying a cave system in Jabal Madar, 200 km south of Muscat in Oman, the authors have identified a set of carbonates that have formed at the junction between deep-seated hydrothermal systems, and the near-surface, meteoric-vadose one.
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