Sedimentary Features

There are three kinds of rock: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Igneous rocks form when molten rock (magma or lava) cools and solidifies. Sedimentary rocks originate when particles settle out of water or air, or by precipitation of minerals from water. They accumulate in layers.

Fun Facts about Sedimentary Rocks for Kids

• Sandstone is made from grains of sand that have melded together over time, or lithified.
• Sedimentary rock often contains fossils of plants and animals millions of years old.
• Limestone is often made from the fossilized remains of ocean life that died millions of years ago.

• Bedding. Bedding is often the most obvious feature of a sedimentary rock and consists of lines called bedding planes, which mark the boundaries of different layers of sediment.
• Graded beds are common when a sediment is being deposited by a slow‐moving current.
• Fossils.
• Desiccation cracks and ripple marks.

Sedimentary structures include features like bedding, ripple marks, fossil tracks and trails, and mud cracks. They conventionally are subdivided into categories based on mode of genesis. Structures that are produced at the same time as the sedimentary rock in which they occur are called primary sedimentary structures.

There are three different types of sedimentary rocks: clastic, organic (biological), and chemical.

Cross-bedding is most common is sandstones.

• Feature # 3. Ripple Marks:
• Feature # 4. Rill Marks:
• Feature # 5. Rain Prints:
• Feature # 6. Mud Cracks and Mud Curls:
• Feature # 7. Fossils:
• Feature # 9. Concretions:
• Feature # 10. Stylolites:
• Feature # 11. Colour of Sedimentary Rocks:

Sedimentary rocks contain rounded grains in layers. The oldest layers are at the bottom and the youngest layers are at the top. Sedimentary rocks may contain fossils of animals and plants trapped in the sediments as the rock was formed. chalk.

What are the three major types of sedimentary rocks? There are three major groups of sedimentary rocks: clastic rocks, organic rocks, and chemical rocks.

Particle size is an important textural parameter of clastic rocks because it supplies information on the conditions of transportation, sorting, and deposition of the sediment and provides some clues to the history of events that occurred at the depositional site prior to final induration.

Chemical sedimentary rocks form by precipitation of minerals from water. Precipitation is when dissolved materials come out of water. For example: Take a glass of water and pour some salt (halite) into it. This is how rocks such as limestones form. …

Sedimentary rocks are economically important in that they can easily be used as construction material because they are soft and easy to cut. Sedimentary rocks often form porous and permeable reservoirs in sedimentary basins in which water and important minerals such as oil can be found.

The most abundant detrital minerals in sediments are quartz and clays. Quartz is an abundant mineral in many rocks. It resists cracking and mechanical weathering and is resistant to solution and decomposition from chemical weathering.

Sedimentary rocks tell us about past environments at Earth’s surface. Because of this, they are the primary story-tellers of past climate, life, and major events at Earth’s surface. Each type of environment has particular processes that occur in it that cause a particular type of sediment to be deposited there.