The intensive studies in the I 960's and I 970's of modern hallow marine carbonate environments in the Persian Gulf (e.g., Shearman, 1963, 1966; Kinsman, 1966; Butler, I 970; Kendall and Skipwith, 1969; Purser, 1973), Florida and the Bahamas (e.g., Shinn and others, 1969; Hardie, 1977a; Enos and Perkins, 1979), and Western Australia (e.g., Logan and others, 1970, 1974b), led to spectacular advances in our understanding of the deposition and early diagenesis of carbonate rocks. These stud1es were part of a major revolution in edimentology that saw a radical change from an approach based heavily on grain textures to one based on sedimentary structures and early diagenetic features. In this new approach, paleo-environments of serumentary deposits are ruagnosed from the vertical and lateral rustribution of elemental rock uruts (subfacies and faCJes), characterized principally by their assemblages of sedimentary structures and early diagenetic features in combinallon With other properties such as sedimentary textures and biota, using analogs established from observations of processes and their sedimentary records 10 modem depositional environments (the "comparative sedimentology" method of Ginsburg, I 974) <...>
