PETROLOGY: Sedimentary Rocks

GEOLOGY IN CIVIL ENGINEERINGS

 Sedimentary Rocks

Sedimentary rocks make up only about 5 percent

of the Earth’s crust. However, because they form
on the Earth’s surface, they are widely spread in a
thin veneer over underlying igneous and
metamorphic rocks.

As a result, sedimentary rocks cover about 75

percent of continents.
 Types of Sedimentary Rocks
1. Clastic sedimentary rocks are
composed of fragments of
weathered rocks, called clasts,
that have been transported,
deposited, and cemented
together. Clastic rocks make up
more than 85 percent of all
sedimentary rocks.

This category includes sandstone,

siltstone, and shale.
 Types of Sedimentary Rocks
2. Organic sedimentary rocks consist of the remains of
plants or animals. Coal is an organic sedimentary rock made
up of decomposed and compacted plant remains.
3. Chemical sedimentary rocks form by direct precipitation
of minerals from solution. Rock salt, for example, forms
when salt precipitates from evaporating seawater or saline
lake water.
4. Bioclastic sedimentary rocks. Most limestone is composed
of broken shell fragments. The fragments are clastic, but
they form from organic material. As a result, limestone
formed in this way is called a bioclastic rock.
 Clastic Sedimentary Rocks: Particle Size
Gravel includes all rounded
particles larger than 2
millimeters in diameter. Angular
particles in the same size range
are called rubble.

Sand ranges from 1/16 to 2

millimeters in diameter. Sand Relative abundances of sedimentary rock types
feels gritty when rubbed
between your fingers, and you
can see the grains with your
naked eye.
 Clastic Sedimentary Rocks: Particle Size
Silt varies from 1/256 to 1/16
millimeter. Individual silt grains
feel smooth when rubbed
between the fingers but gritty
when rubbed between your
teeth.
Clay is less than 1/256 millimeter
in diameter. It is so fine that it
feels smooth even when rubbed
between your teeth. Mud is wet
silt and clay.
 Lithification
Lithification refers to processes that convert loose sediment
to hard rock. Two of the most important processes are
compaction and cementation.

If you fill a container with sand, the sand grains

do not fill the entire space. Small voids, called
pores, exist between the grains

(a) Pore space is the open space among grains of sediment

 Lithification
As more sediment accumulates, its weight compacts the
buried sediment, decreasing pore space and forcing out
some of the water (Fig. 7–4b). This process is called
compaction. Compaction alone may lithify clay because the
platy grains interlock like pieces of a puzzle.

(b) Compaction decreases pore space and

Lithifies sediment by interlocking the grains
 Lithification
Water normally circulates through the pore space in buried
and compacted sediment. This water commonly contains
dissolved calcium carbonate, silica, and iron, which
precipitate in the pore spaces and cement the clastic grains
together to form a hard rock

(c) Cement fills pores and lithifies

sediment by binding grains together
 Types of Clastic Rocks
Conglomerate and Breccia

Conglomerate and breccia are

coarse-grained clastic rocks.
They are the lithified
equivalents of gravel and
rubble, respectively.
 Types of Clastic Rocks
Sandstone
Sandstone consists of lithified sand grains. When
granitic bedrock weathers, feldspar commonly
converts to clay, but quartz crystals resist weathering.
Arkose is a sandstone comprising 25 percent or more
feldspar grains, with most of the remaining grains
being quartz.
Graywacke is a poorly sorted sandstone with
considerable quantities of silt and clay in its pores.
 Types of Clastic Rocks

A B
Sandstone is lithified sand. (a) A sandstone cliff above the Colorado River, Canyonlands, Utah.
(b) A close-up of sandstone. Notice the well-rounded sand grains.
 Types of Clastic Rocks
Claystone, Shale, Mudstone, and Siltstone

Claystone is composed predominantly of clay

minerals and small amounts of quartz and other
minerals of clay size.
Shale (Fig. 7–9a) consists of the same material
but has a finely layered structure called fissility,
along which the rock splits easily
 Types of Clastic Rocks
Claystone, Shale, Mudstone, and Siltstone
Mudstone is a nonfissile rock composed of clay and silt. In
some mudstone and claystone, layering is absent because
burrowing animals such as worms, clams, and crabs
disrupted it by churning the sediment.
Siltstone is lithified silt. The main component of most
siltstones is quartz, although clays are also commonly
present. Siltstones often show layering but lack the fine
fissility of shales because of their lower clay content.
 Organic Sedimentary Rocks
Organic sedimentary rocks, such as chert and coal, form by
lithification of the remains of plants and animals.
Chert
Chert is a rock composed of pure silica. It occurs as
sedimentary beds interlayered with other sedimentary rocks
and as irregularly shaped lumps called nodules in other
sedimentary rocks

Red nodules of chert in

light-colored limestone.
 Organic Sedimentary Rocks
Coal

When plants die, their remains usually decompose by

reaction with oxygen. However, in warm swamps and in
other environments where plant growth is rapid, dead plants
accumulate so rapidly that the oxygen is used up long before
the decay process is complete. The undecayed or partially
decayed plant remains form peat. As peat is buried and
compacted by overlying sediments, it converts to coal, a
hard, black, combustible rock.
 Chemical Sedimentary Rocks
Evaporites form when evaporation concentrates dissolved
ions to the point at which they precipitate from solution

An evaporating lake precipitated thick salt deposits

on the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.
 Chemical Sedimentary Rocks
Seawater is so nearly saturated in calcium carbonate that
calcium carbonate minerals can precipitate under the proper
conditions.

This process produces nearly perfect spheres called oöliths.

In turn, oöliths may become cemented together to form
oölitic limestone. Limestone of this type is a chemical
sedimentary rock. However, most limestone is bioclastic
 Bioclastic Rocks
Carbonate rocks are made up primarily of carbonate
minerals, which contain the carbonate ion.
Calcite-rich carbonate rocks are called limestone, whereas
rocks rich in the mineral dolomite are also called dolomite.
Many geologists use the term dolostone for the rock name
to distinguish it from the mineral dolomite.
When these organisms die, waves and ocean currents break
the shells into small fragments, called bioclastic sediment. A
rock formed by lithification of such sediment is called
bioclastic limestone,
 Bioclastic Rocks
Coquina is bioclastic limestone consisting
wholly of coarse shell fragments
cemented together.
Chalk is a very fine-grained, soft, white
bioclastic limestone made of the shells
and skeletons of microorganisms that
float near the surface of the oceans.
Dolomite composes more than half of all
carbonate rocks that are over a billion
years old and a smaller, although
substantial, proportion of younger
carbonate rocks.
 Sedimentary Structures
Nearly all sedimentary rocks contain sedimentary structures,
features that developed during or shortly after deposition of
the sediment. These structures help us understand how the
sediment was transported and deposited.

The most obvious and common sedimentary structure is

bedding, or stratification—layering that develops as
sediment is deposited
 Sedimentary Structures
Cross-bedding consists of small
beds lying at an angle to the main
sedimentary layering
Ripple marks are small, nearly
parallel sand ridges and troughs
that are also formed by moving
water or wind.
 Sedimentary Structures
Graded bedding, the largest grains collect at the bottom of a
layer and the grain size decreases toward the top
Mud cracks are polygonal cracks that form when mud
shrinks as it dries
 Sedimentary Structures

Fossils are any remains or

traces of a plant or animal
preserved in rock—any
evidence of past life. Fossils
include remains of shells,
bones, or teeth; whole bodies
preserved in amber or ice;
and a variety of tracks,
burrows, and chemical
remains.