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Of course the salt crystals and salt pillars in the Dead Sea are tiny compared to salt controlled structures in the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico (see Figure 47) or mountain building salt structures found from China to Central Utah to Iran. One of the most dramatic examples of how salt flows have created mountains is in Southern Iran in the Zagros Fold Belt (see Figure 50). These mountains are formed by a combination of salt and tectonic plate movement. One of the interesting aspects of these salt structures is that the salt flows have breached to the surface, and salt is exposed at numerous places in the mountains. Figure 51 shows a 3-D topographic reconstruction, where satellite image data has been draped over topography to highlight how the salt flows have come out of the mountains which they helped form.
Figure 50. Satellite image of salt tectonic anticlines in Iran's Zagros Fold Belt.3.158
It takes a lot of salt to form mountains like the Katy Salt Domes or the Zagros Fold Belt. When scientists compare the amount of salt necessary to create these structures to the amount of salt being generated in modern analogs like the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake, it is obvious the processes took a very, very, very, very long time to occur.
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paradoxes
