Geomorphology Commons^™

Secondary Minerals From Salt Caves In The Atacama Desert (Chile): A Hyperarid And Hypersaline Environment With Potential Analogies To The Martian Subsurface, Jo De Waele, Cristina Carbone, Laura Sanna, Marco Vattano, Ermanno Galli, Francesco Sauro, Paolo Forti

International Journal of Speleology

Over the past 15 years several expeditions by French, American and especially Italian cavers have unveiled over 50 caves in the Cordillera de la Sal (Atacama Desert, Northern Chile). Many of these caves contain a variety of speleothems and minerals, some of which have rarely been observed within karst systems. Most of the secondary deposits in these caves are composed of halite, but also other halide, carbonate, sulphate, nitrate, phosphate, and silicate minerals have been found. Among the sixteen cave mineral species recognized, atacamite, darapskite, blödite, leonite, anhydrite, and especially antarcticite are worth mentioning. In one of the samples an …