Lesson 1: Introduction to Sedimentary Petrology Flashcards
Measures clay to boulders.
Udden - Wentworth Scale
Rocks form at low temperatures and pressures at the surface of the Earth.
Sedimentary
They cover roughly three-fourths of the Earth’s surface.
Sedimentary
Their textures, structures, composition, and fossil content reveal the nature of past surface environments and life forms.
Sedimentary
Types of resistant rocks that are not prone to weathering.
Silicate minerals and rock fragments
Types of secondary minerals.
Clay minerals and Iron oxides
Soluble constituents
Calcium, Potassium, Sodium, Magnesium
Arrange in order the life of a sedimentary rock.
Source Rock, Transportation, Deposition, Chemical/Biochemical Precipitation, Diagenesis
Leading to solution or destruction of some sediments and leads to a generation of new minerals in sediments
Diagenesis
Common sediments that make up common sandstone, conglomerates, and
shales.
Terrigenous Siliciclastic Particles
Divided by composition into carbonates, evaporites, cherts, ironstone and iron-formations, and phosphorites.
Chemical/ Biochemical Constituents
Rocks that have soluble constituents
Calcite, Apatite, Gypsum
Carbonaceous materials with woody residue of plants and chief components of coal.
Humic
Precipitated minerals such as silts and sand size grains moved by waves and depositional basin.
Aggregated Grains
Remains of spores, pollen, phyto-and zooplankton, and macerated plan debris that accumulate in water
Sapropelic
One of the constituents of cannel coals and oil shales.
Sapropelic
Solid asphaltic residues that form through the loss of volatiles, oxidation, and polymerization.
Bitumens
Added during burial but never the dominant constituents of sedimentary rock.
Authigenic constituents
Important as indicators of past depositional conditions
Sandstones and limestones
Authigenic constituents of minerals
Quartz, feldspar, clay minerals
Shrinking ocean basins caught between colliding continental margins/arch-trench/subducted/deformed suture belts.
example: bay of bengal
Remnant Ocean Basin
Foreland basins above rifted continental margins that have been pulled into subduction zone during collision.
example: Persian gulf
Peripheral Foreland Basin
Basins formed and carried atop moving thrust sheets
example: Peshawar basin
Piggy Back Basin
Basin formed among basement-cored uplifts in foreland settings.
Foreland Intermontane Basins
Basins formed by extension along strike-slip fault systems.
Example: Salton Sea
Transtensional Basins
Basins formed by compression along strike-slip fault
systems
Example: Santa Barbara Basin
Transpressional Basins
Basins formed by rotation of crustal blocks about vertical axes within strike-slip fault systems.
Example: Western Aleutian Forearc.
Transrotational Basins
Diverse basins formed within and on continental crust due to distant collisional processes.
Example: Qaidam Basin China
Intracontinental Wrench Basins
Former failed rifts at high angles to continental margins, which have been reactivated during convergent tectonics, so that they are at high angles to orogenic belts.
Example: Mississippi embayment
Aulacogens
Rifts formed at high angles to orogenic belts, without
preorogenic history (in contrast with aulacogens).
Example: Baikal rift (Siberia) (distal)
Impactogens
Basins formed in intermontane settings following cessation of local orogenic or taphrogenic activity.
Example: Southern Basin and Range Arizona.
Successor Basins
Broad scientific discipline that encompasses the study of all kinds of sedimentary rocks
Sedimentary Petrology
Deals with the characterization of the individual sediments
Sedimentology
