Introduction to Sediments

 

1. Lecture Notes:

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Slides with extended notes: HERE - all this material is examinable.
Slides only: HERE
Slides only LARGE file size: HERE


2. Required Reading:
Depositional Basins and Plate Tectonics, page 218 - 229
NOTE: text book readings are tested online and not exams with the exception of topic 5.


3. Lecture Goals

Note! Lecture goals are intended to help you understand the main themes in the lecture. They are NOT designed as a guide to the exact content that will appear in exams.

i. Broadly categorize the main types of sedimentary rocks

  1. ii.Differentiate between the hierarchies of stratigraphic bedforms and identify those bedforms

  2. iii. Construct and interpret sedimentary log

  3. iv. Classify sedimentary structures by sedimentological type

  4. v. Interpret sedimentary structures in terms of their environmental, biological or diagenetic environment


4. Sample Questions (answers given at the bottom of the page)

Note! These questions are drawn from individual lectures. Questions on the exams may draw their content from ACROSS lecture material and not focus on any one specific area as the questions do here.


  1. 1.Chalk is composed of  calcium carbonate (a limestone) that is made up of the skeletons of micro-organisms called coccolithophores. An oolitic limestone is composed of spherical concentric grains of calcium carbonate that are precipitated in warm shallow marine environments. How would you classify these two rocks? siliciclastic, orthochemical or allochemical?

  2. 2.In terms of the rock cycle which of the following transformations would not be possible?

  3. a)sediment to metamorphic to igneous

  4. b)sediment to sediment to sediment

  5. c)sediment to igneous to metamorphic

  6. d)sediment to sediment to metamorphic

  7. e)sediment to metamorphic to sediment


3. Overall how is grain size changing from the oldest to the youngest part of this log?


4. Which of the following is/are probably the main agent(s) of deposition of sediment on Mars today?

a) water
b) wind
c) gravity
d) ice


ANSWERS

1.
Chalk: produced biochemically - allochemical.

Oolitic limestone: produced inorganically - orthochemical


2.

  1. a)a sedimentary would have to pass though a metamorphic phase before melting to form an igneous roc.


3. Grain size is decreasing

4.
b) and c)


 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Delicate_arch_sunset.jpg