History of the ME® Mineral Essentials water
About 600 million years ago, when the North American continent was much smaller than today, a shallow sea formed in the area that is now the Great Lakes region. The sea occupied a large basin, at times almost circular in shape, perhaps not unlike the modem Gulf of Mexico. Over a period of newly 400 million years, the basin collected sediment from the sea and the surrounding) and, forming sedimentary rocks which eventually filled it to a maximum depth of 14,000 feet at its center near Saginaw.
This basin is known as the Michigan Basin and its sequence or column of sedimentary rocks represents an important window into North America's geologic evolution. The basin's development spans the Palaeozoic Era, which began with relatively simple sea life and ended with abundant, complex terrestrial life that, among other things, contributed to the formation of our great coal reserves.
In the rocks of the Michigan Basin is a record of dramatic change not only in life but in climatic conditions. One of the most intriguing changes during part of the Paleozoic was a shift in climate to arid conditions. This transformed the Michigan Basin into an evaporation basin. As seawater evaporated, more salt was continually delivered to the basin by influxes of ocean water. Brine formed on the sea floor and salt residues were deposited in great flats along the coast. These conditions persisted for millions of years, giving rise to one of the earth's largest salt formations. The aggregate thickness of Michigan's Silurian salt beds (called the Salina Formation) is 2000 feet. One bed of pure salt alone is 500 feet thick! To produce the Salina salt beds, 30,000 cubic kilometers of sea water were evaporated.
The mineral content of the ancient seawater was, of course, the main determinant of the salt bed's chemical composition. But other factors also played a put, particularly the environment, of deposition and the chemical solubility of different salt minerals. The least soluble minerals such as calcium carbonate were deposited first. Sodium chloride, which is the principal constituent of the Mt. Clemens brine, was deposited near the end of the sequence. These minerals along with many others in smaller amounts were often deposited in sequence which was repeated again and again with each evaporation cycle.
