Word Finder - sedimentary

definition

A rock of this kind.

definition

(of a rock) Made by the deposition and compression of small particles.

The sedimentary deposits include slate, limestone and sandstone.

The sedimentary rocks are affected by many dikes and sheets of igneous rock, some of the latter being extrusive and some intrusive.

In sedimentary rocks it occurs as detrital material.

In a large part of this basin the covering of sedimentary deposits is comparatively thin.

The most widely spread of the sedimentary beds belong to the Miocene period.'

They are typical products of "regional" metamorphism, and are in nearly all cases older than the fossiliferous sedimentary rocks.

Deposits of brown iron ore of great economic value occur in many sedimentary rocks, such as the Lias, Oolites and Lower Greensand of various parts of England.

Others are probably sedimentary rocks, especially those which contain much muscovite.

A few geologists regard the sedimentary rocks here classed as Keweenawan as Palaeozoic; but they have yielded no fossils, and are unconformable beneath the Upper Cambrian, which is the oldest sedimentary formation of the region which bears fossils.

In that belt they consist mostly of greywacke, grit, shale and other sedimentary rocks, but in the southwest of Ayrshire they include some thick lenticular bands of limestone.

They occur (a) in crystalline igneous and metamorphic rocks as an original constituent, (b) in veins associated with igneous rocks, and (c) in sedimentary rocks either as organic fragments or in secondary concretionary forms.

Transitions between schists and normal igneous or sedimentary rocks are often found.

Slate is a soft sedimentary rock, which easily splits into thin layers.

Where a thick group of coarse hard grits intercalated in the sedimentary rocks crops out it rises into a chain of lofty rugged hills, of which Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich are examples.

Schists in the common acceptance of that term are really highly crystalline rocks; fissile slates, shales or sandstones, in which the original sedimentary structures are little modified by recrystallization, are not included in this group by English petrologists, though the French schistes and the German Schiefer are used to designate also rocks of these types.

Locally both the sedimentary and igneous parts of the group have been highly metamorphosed; but as a rule the alteration of the sedimentary portions has not gone so far that stratigraphic methods are inapplicable to them, though in some places detailed study is necessary to make out their structure.

Timor consists of a core of ancient rocks (Archean?) upon which rest Permian and later deposits of sedimentary origin.

In the case of the Alps it seems natural enough that the crystalline masses of Bohemia, the Black Forest and the central plateau of France should be firmer than the more modern sedimentary deposits; but it is not so easy to understand why the Mesozoic rocks of southern Germany resisted the folding, while those of the Jura yielded.

It occurs crystallized, commonly in cubes, in schistose and slaty rocks, and less abundantly in the younger sedimentary deposits.

Blende, is also found sporadically in sedimentary rocks; for example, in nodules of clay-ironstone in the Coal Measures, in the cement-doggers of the Lias, and in the casts of fossil shells.

The mountain range that runs out towards the north-east of Sicily is composed of crystalline rocks precisely similar to those forming the parallel range of Aspromonte in Calabria, but both of these are girt about by sedimentary strata belonging in part to an early Tertiary epoch.

The core is formed by the mountain masses of Rhodope, Belasitza, Perin and Rila; and here Palaeozoic and Mesozoic beds are absent, and the earliest sedimentary deposits belong to the Tertiary period and lie flat upon the crystalline rocks.

He argued also in favour of the original horizontality of sedimentary deposits.

In some cases these sedimentary rocks lie deeply buried under lavas poured out by volcanoes long extinct.

So far as is known, the Malay Peninsula consists of an axial zone of crystalline rocks, flanked on each side by an incomplete band of sedimentary deposits.

The prevailing formations appear to be granites which are veined with white quartz, and underlie old sedimentary brown sandstone and limestone formations.

These beds, as well as the Cretaceous series, from which they are as yet only imperfectly distinguished, are associated with sheets of basalt, which penetrate them in great dikes, and in some places, owing to the wearing away of the softer sedimentary rocks, stand out in long walls running across the beds.

It consists of a series of plateaus formed of sedimentary rocks which mainly belong to three formations of widely separated ages, and which rest on a platform of granitic and metamorphic rocks.

The rocks at the base of the slopes are granite, the upper escarpments are of sedimentary rocks.

Throughout the whole of Arabia, so far as is known, the sedimentary beds show no signs of any but the most gentle folding.

Unlike Australia, its geological structure is unusually varied, and owing to its instability, it includes, for its size, an unusually complete series of marine sedimentary rocks.

Outside the lower end of each large transverse glen there is a scree of sedimentary matter.

The sedimentary deposits of the Tertiary era do not occupy a very wide area.

This view of its origin is now known not to be applicable to the Archean as a whole, since this system contains some metamorphosed sedimentary rocks.

Metamorphosed sedimentary rocks are widely distributed in the schistose series, but they are distinctly subordinate to the meta-ignecius rocks, and they are so highly metamorphic that stratigraphic methods are not usually applicable to them.

Iron ore occurs in the sedimentary part of the Huronian, especially in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Canada.

The copper of the Lake Superior region is in the Keweenawaii system, chiefly in its sedimentary and amygdaloidal parts.

They consist, in most parts of the country, of unconsolidated sediments, consisting of gravel, sand, clay, &c., together with large quantities of tuff, volcanic agglomerate, &c. Some of the sedimentary formations are of marine, some of brackish water, and some of terrestrial origin.

From the map it will be noticed that the largest and most thickly strewn lakes occur within five hundred or a thousand miles of Hudson Bay, and belong to the Archean protaxis or project beyond its edges into the Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks which lean against it.

The Keewatin and Huronian, consisting of greenstones, schists and more or less metamorphosed sedimentary rocks, are of special interest for their ore deposits, which include most of the important metals, particularly iron, nickel, copper and silver.

The several ranges of the Cordillera show very different types of structure and were formed at different ages, the Selkirks with their core of pre-Cambrian granite, gneiss and schists coming first, then the Coast Ranges, which seem to have been elevated in Cretaceous times, formed mainly by a great upwelling of granite and diorite as batholiths along the margin of the continent and sedimentary rocks lying as remnants on their flanks; and finally the Rocky Mountains in the Laramie or early Eocene, after the close of the Cretaceous.

This latest and also highest range was formed by tremendous thrusts from the Pacific side, crumpling and folding the ancient sedimentary rocks, which run from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous, and faulting them along overturned folds.

The Great Valley Region consists of folded sedimentary rocks, extensive erosion having removed the soft layers to form valleys, leaving the hard layers as ridges, both layers running in a N.E.-S.W.

In some places along the coast there is a narrow strip of decomposed coral limestone; often, too, a coral reef has served to catch the sediment washed down the mountain side until a deep sedimentary soil has been deposited.

The lowest of these younger rocks are the various sedimentary and volcanic members of the Old Red Sandstone.

Determined by the inequalities of surface of the overlying mantle of sedimentary material, they would be wholly independent of the geological structure of the rocks lying.

The central, southern and eastern Highlands are occupied by metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks, to which has been provisionally assigned the name of Dalradian, from the old Celtic kingdom of Dalriada.

Immense -sheets of dolerite, gabbro, or allied basic rocks indicate eruptive materials intruded as sills or poured out as lavas contemporaneously with the sedimentary formations among which they lie.

The Eastern Cordillera is composed of gneiss, mica and chlorite schist and other crystalline rocks of ancient date; the Western Cordillera, on the other hand, is formed of porphyritic eruptive rocks of Mesozoic age, together with sedimentary deposits containing Cretaceous fossils.

The end of the Cretaceous period saw the beginning of a series of great earth movements ushered in by volcanic eruptions on a scale such as the earth has never since witnessed, which resulted in the upheaval of the Himalayas by a process of crushing and folding of the sedimentary rocks till marine fossils were forced to an altitude of 20,000 ft.