Limestones originate mainly through the lithification of loose carbonate sediments. Modern carbonate sediments are generated in a variety of environments: continental, marine, and transitional, but most are marine. The present-day Bahama banks is the best known modern carbonate setting. It is a broad submarine shelf covered by shallow, warm seawater. The Bahama shelf, or carbonate platform, mimics the setting that repeatedly prevailed across the stable cratonic areas of the major continental blocks during late Precambrian, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic time and serves as a model for explaining the various limestone types that make up such ancient carbonate successions.

The edge of the shelf is marked by a topographically sharp escarpment flanked by coarse, angular limestone breccia. Submarine channels etched into the escarpment serve as waterways down which shallow-water carbonate sediment can be transported by turbidity currents capable of redistributing them as apronlike deposits on the oceanic abyssal plain. In many areas, the fringe of the Bahama banks is marked by wave-resistant reef rocks (sometimes classified as boundstone). Abrasion of these reefs by wave activity generates abundant skeletal debris. Variations in depth and current strength control the relative amounts of micrite and sparite, the prevalence of specific organisms and their productivity, and the likelihood of generating oöids, pellets, and carbonate rock fragments. Micrite and micritic allochemical sediments accumulate in deep-water, low-energy, protected areas like lagoons and tidal flats and on the leeward side of major islands. In high-energy, shallow-water locales such as beaches, coastal dunes, and tidal channels, currents winnow out any micrite, and these become the sites of sparry allochemical sediment deposition. Pinpointing the exact depositional setting for an ancient carbonate deposit requires detailed analysis of its texture, composition, sedimentary structures, geometry, fossil content, and stratigraphic relationships with modern carbonate depositional sites.

In addition to the ancient analogues of the modern carbonate deposits described above are freshwater limestones (marls) and limestone muds (or calcilutites) of deep-water abyssal plains. Freshwater limestones of limited extent represent a spectrum of small-scale settings developed within and along the margins of lacustrine basins. Deep-water abyssal plain limestones are quite restricted in volume and age in the geologic record for a number of reasons. First of all, abyssal plain sequences are less likely to be incorporated into the orogenic belts that develop as continental margins are compressed during ocean basin closure. Second, pelagic calcareous oozes are the obvious modern analogues of ancient abyssal plain calcilutites. These oozes are produced by aragonite-secreting plankton that float near the surface (such as foraminiferans and coccoliths), which upon their death leave their shells, or tests, to settle slowly to the ocean bottom and accumulate. The development of such deep-sea deposits is therefore obviously dependent on the existence of calcium-secreting planktonic organisms, and these did not evolve until Mesozoic time. Finally, calcareous ooze accumulation is severely restricted both by latitude (being largely confined to a band extending 30° to 40° north and south of the Equator) and abyssal plain depth (approximately 2,000 metres). Below a depth of about 4,500 metres, which is the carbonate compensation depth (CCD), the pressure and temperature of seawater produces a rate of dissolution in excess of the rate of pelagic test accumulation.

Dolomites and dolomitization

Dolomite is produced by dolomitization, a diagenetic process in which the calcium carbonate minerals aragonite and calcite are recrystallized and converted into the mineral dolomite. Dolomitization can obscure or even obliterate all or part of the original limestone textures and structures; in the case where such original features survive, carbonate nomenclature and interpretation can still be applied to the rock with emphasis on the effects of alteration.

The exact processes by which limestones are dolomitized are not thoroughly understood, but dolomites occur widely in the geologic record. The relative proportion of dolomite to limestone progressively increases with age in carbonate rocks. This secular trend probably either reflects the earlier existence of geochemical settings that were more favourable to dolomitization or is the logical result of the fact that the likelihood for a limestone to undergo dolomitization increases proportionally with its age.

Geochemists have been unable to precipitate normal dolomite under the conditions of temperature and pressure that exist in nature; temperatures within the 200 °C range are required to support precipitation. A few modern, so-called primary marine dolomite localities have been studied, but close investigation of these areas suggests that even these penecontemporaneous dolomites are produced by altering calcite or aragonite almost immediately after their initial precipitation. Dolomites generated by later alteration of older limestones are known as diagenetic dolomites.

The study of the few reported penecontemporaneous dolomite sites allows some conclusions to be formed regarding the dolomitization process. These modern dolomites develop mainly under conditions of high salinity (hypersalinity), which commonly exist in arid regions across supratidal mud flats as well as on the flat, saline plains and playa lake beds known as sabkhas. In highly saline environments, the ratio of dissolved magnesium ions to dissolved calcium ions progressively increases above the norm for seawater (5:1) as a result of the selective formation of calcium-rich evaporite minerals like gypsum and anhydrite. These magnesium-rich brines then tend to be flushed downward owing to their high density; the entire process is named evaporative reflux. Penecontemporaneous dolomites would result from the positioning of sabkhas and arid supratidal flats in a site that is in immediate contact with carbonate sediment; diagenetic dolomites would logically result when such dolomite-producing settings overlie older limestone deposits. The presence of fissures or highly permeable zones serving as channelways for downward percolation of dolomitizing fluids would also promote the alteration. Other studies have emphasized a possible role in dolomitization for dense brackish (salty) fluids formed when seawater and meteoric waters (those precipitated from the atmosphere as rain or snow) are produced along coastal zones.