Chapter 4 Section 3 Sedimentary Rocks What You

Chapter 4 Section 3 Sedimentary Rocks

What You Will Learn • Describe the origin of sedimentary rock. • Describe three main categories of sedimentary rock. • Describe three types of sedimentary structures.

Where does Sand come from? • Sand is a product of weathering, which breaks rock into pieces. • Over time, sand grains may be compacted, or compressed, and then cemented together to form a rock called sandstone. • Sandstone is just one of many types of sedimentary rock.

Origins of Sedimentary Rock • Wind, water, ice, sunlight, and gravity all cause rock to physically weather into fragments. • Through the process of erosion, these rock and mineral fragments, called sediment, are moved from one place to another. • Eventually, the sediment is deposited in layers. As new layers of sediment are deposited, they cover older layers. Older layers become compacted.

Origins of Sedimentary Rock • Sedimentary rock forms at or near the Earth’s surface. • It forms without the heat and pressure that are involved in the formation of igneous and metamorphic rocks.

• The most noticeable feature of sedimentary rock is its layers, or strata. • A single, horizontal layer of rock is sometimes visible for many miles. Road cuts are good places to observe strata. • Figure 1 shows the spectacular views that sedimentary rock formations carved by erosion can provide.

Composition of Sedimentary Rock • Sedimentary rock is classified by the way it forms. • Clastic sedimentary rock forms when rock or mineral fragments, called clasts, are cemented together. • Chemical sedimentary rock forms when minerals crystallize out of a solution, such as sea water, to become rock. • Organic sedimentary rock forms from the remains of once-living plants and animals.

Clastic Sedimentary Rock • Clastic sedimentary rock is made of fragments of rocks cemented together by a mineral such as calcite or quartz. • Figure 2 shows how clastic sedimentary rock is classified according to the size of the fragments from which the rock is made. • Clastic sedimentary rocks can have coarsegrained, medium-grained, or fine-grained textures.

Chemical Sedimentary Rock • Chemical sedimentary rock forms from solutions of dissolved minerals and water. • As rainwater slowly makes its way to the ocean, it dissolves some of the rock material it passes through. • Some of this dissolved material eventually crystallizes and forms the minerals that make up chemical sedimentary rock.

Organic Sedimentary Rock • Most limestone forms from the remains, or fossils, of animals that once lived in the ocean. • For example, some limestone is made of the skeletons of tiny organisms called coral.

Coal • Another type of organic sedimentary rock is coal. • Coal forms underground when partially decomposed plant material is buried beneath sediment and is changed into coal by increasing heat and pressure. • This process occurs over millions of years.

Sedimentary Rock Structures • Many features can tell you about the way sedimentary rock formed. • The most important feature of sedimentary rock is stratification. • Stratification is the process in which sedimentary rocks are arranged in layers. – Strata differ from one another depending on the kind, size, and color of their sediment.

• Sedimentary rocks sometimes record the motion of wind and water waves on lakes, oceans, rivers, and sand dunes in features called ripple marks, as shown in Figure 5.