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Sedimentary rock ____
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In their page, Rocks or Idaho; Harvey, Jacqueline, Vita Taube, and Diana Boyackarth states that the earth contains three types of rocks: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rock makes up most of the rocks on the earth.The earth contains seventy five percent sedimentary rock. Seventy percent are sedimentary rocks that are on the earths surface, the other 5% is on the earths crust. Sedimentary rocks are formed in two main stages. First ocean waves, rivers, glaciers, wind or landslides transport loose, solid particles from weathering and erosion of preexisting rock. The particles are named sediment (Rocks of Idaho).
Next the loose sediment is converted into sedimentary rock in compaction, cementation, and recrystallization. Compaction is when the air and water is pushed out of the bottom layer of sediment as more layers build up and press down on it. Cementation is when the sediment is cemented together with natural cements like calcite and silica. This process of the loose sediment being converted into sedimentary rock is called lithification (Rocks of Idaho). Recrystallization is when unstable minerals recrystallize to form more stable minerals (South Carolina Geological Survey).
The rocks are formed in places where there had been water at one time. Dead animals, plants and pieces or rock minerals carried by wind, water, ice, and gravity sink to the bottom of bodies or water. When the body of water dries up the rock becomes a surface layer.
There's three basic types of sedimentary rock classic, chemical, and organic. Classic sedimentary rocks are formed from mechanical weathering debri. Examples are breccia, conglomerate, sandstone, and shale. Chemical sedimentary rocks form when dissolved materials precipitat...
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...h round edges. Moderately rounded rocks are in between well rounded and poorly rounded rocks (Sedimentary Rocks and the Rock Cycle).
Works Cited
● "Sedimentary Rocks." ThinkQuest. Oracle Foundation, n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
● Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. .
● Harvey, Jacqueline, Vita Taube, and Diana Boyack. "Rocks of Idaho." N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. .
● Lucas, Chris, and Kate Seigfried. "The Rock Cycle Web Site - Cementation and Compaction." The Rock Cycle. N.p., 4 Dec. 2000. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. .
● "Sedimentary Rocks and the Rock Cycle." South Carolina Geological Survey, n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
Marshak, S. (2009) Essentials of Geology, 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, ch. 11, p. 298-320.
The Starved Rock Member of the Saint Peter Sandstone is preserved as a northeast-southwest trending belt of strata that is ...
The site visited on this day was informally known as the Bedrock Knob (NTS grid reference: 120 342). It is in an area where patches of limestone and exposed bedrock are common. The bedrock is part of the Preca...
Tarbuck E., Lutgens F., Tasa D., 2014, An Introduction to Physical Geology, 5th Ed, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
This sedimentary rock has hardened over the many years with sand shells, small pebbles, grains of sand and rocks of various sizes. In comparison to our 4.5 billion year old Earth, these sand shells might as well be brand new, when in reality they could be up to 1,000 years old. If the sandstone were to be replaced with calcite it would completely change the subclass of rock, it would then be chemical & organic limestone. The variation in sand stone is due to different rates of deposition and change in patterns of the sediment movement (Mc Knight, p. 384). These tightly compacted varying stones and shells will be weathered away by wind and waves over time and could eventually be reduced to a rock the size of your hand.
Plummer, C.C., McGeary, D., and Carlson, D.H., 2003, Physical geology (10th Ed.): McGraw-Hill, Boston, 580 p.
Froede, Carl R. “Stone Mountain Georgia: A Creation Geologist's Perspective.” CRS Quartely 31, no. 4 (March 1995): 6.
Morton, J. W. (n.d.). Metamorphosed melange terrane in the eastern piedmont of north carolina. Retrieved from http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/14/7/551.abstract
...c Research Papers, 1964. Jackson, MS: Mississippi Geological, Economic and Topographical Survey, 1964. 15. Print.
United States Geologic Survey. USGS: Your Source for Science You Can Use. Ed. Marcia McNutt. The United States Department of the Interior, 2000. Web. 20 June 2010. .
Krajick, Kevin. "Tracking Myth to Geological Reality." American Association for the Advancement of Science. 310.5749 (2005): 762. Print. .
Concretions form in many different ways. The box shape of some ironstone concretions most often depend on the way a sandstone or shale bed breaks up due to the action of weathering into regular blocks of various sizes. The way in which this separation takes place along natural planes of weakness in a rock such as a horizontal bedding surface and vertical joints. Before this process of separation, as well as during the separation ground water soaks into the rock and circulates through the planes of weakness making the rock more porous.
The geologic history of the Rocky Mountains has come about as an aggregation of millions of years. Briefly speaking, the formation of the Rockies transpired from hundreds and millions of years of uplift by tectonic plates and millions of years of erosion and ice have helped sculpt the mountains to be what we see today. The majority of the rocks that make up the Rocky Mountains began as simple shale, siltstone, and sandstone accompanied by smaller amounts of volcanic rock which formally built up for approximately 1.8 to 2 billion years in the ancient sea. By 1.7 to 1.6 billion years, these sedimentary rocks got caught in the zone of collision between parts of the earth’s crust and its tectonic plates. The incredible heat at the core of the mountain range then recrystallized the rock into metamorphic rock by the heat and pressure of the collision forces. Eventually, the shale would be transformed into both schist and gneiss. It is believed that granite found in the Rocky Mountain parks came from pre-existing metamorphic rock created shortly after the formation of the earth. Ultimately, the high mountains of the period were slowly eroded away to a flat surface exposing metamorphic rocks and granite. This process occurred around the period of 1,300 to 500 million years ago. This flat surface would become covered with shallow seas and rocks from the Paleozoic period and would be deposited and eventually cover the surface. There is...
They are mostly created under water. Sediment makes up a sedimentary rock with materials such as mud, clay, sand, pebbles, and organisms that once lived. These materials are worn away over years by natural occurrences such as wind, water, rain, and snow. Imagine a road in the winter when it begins breaking apart and withering away. The sediment eventually ends up in one place and layer upon each other. When observing these rocks we get the opportunity to see into the past and understand how the world was like long ago. This is possible by observing the impressions made by different organisms and
One type of space rock is a comet. Comets contain methane, carbon dioxide, ice, ammonia, and dust. Put all these substances together and you get a comet. It has a solid core, which contains dark, organic material covered with dust and mainly ice inside. The ice consists of frozen water, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and carbon monoxide. Comets orbit for less than 200 years and they orbit in the Oort cloud beyond Pluto’s orbit. Comets also orbit in the Kuiper Belt, its shape resembling a doughnut beyond Neptune’s orbit. When a comet gets pulled out of orbit and is...