Depositional Environments - Sedimentary Rocks - sediments (or rocks) and fossils

By way of introduction, the continental environments are mainly siliclastic with few fossils but also
with nonsiliclastic sediments, such as freshwater limestone and evaporites.
1. alluvial fan - poorly sorted with gravel-size detritus, generally at the base of a mountain range, in
sparsely vegetated arid or semiarid at cloudburst or humid regions with rainfall. They may contain
large boulders and blocks. They may be cone-shaped or arc-shaped and branched.Usually courser at
upper fan to fine at lower fan. Alluvial fans usually lack fossils except plant fragments and rare
vertebrate remains.
2. desert dunes - loose sand and fine sediment, with wind separating sediment finer than 0.05 mm
from courser, but may transport up to ~2 mm grains (courser may roll and creep); well-sorted and well
rounded sand (separated form loessy silt and gravelly pavement), usually quartz rich and sometimes
gypsum. (Coastal dunes may ooids, skeletal fragments, or other carbonate grains.) Structures may
include laminae, ripples, and cross-strata. Interdunes may be course, bimodal, and poorly sorted,
bioturbated by animals and plants. Wet interdunes may contain silts and clays may be trapped and
may contain gastropods, pelecypods, diatoms, and ostracods, and may be bioturbated, and may
contain vertebrate footprints. There are also evaportite interdunes. Sheet sands may have
bioturbation caused by insects and plants.
3. lake - if drain to the center of the basin, may deposit carbonate and evaporites. May contain
shales, evaporite minerals, coal, and iron. May contain varves (with thinner, clayey, organic layers
from winter). May be diatoms and pelecypods, gastropods, calcareous algae, and ostracods,
cyanobacterial stromatolites. Burrowing may have destroyed lamination. Open lakes may have
siliclastic depostis from rivers or windblown, ice-rafted, or volcanic detritus. Deeper expect fine silt
and clay. Sedimentary stuctures may include casts and mudcracks. Sandstones and conglomerates
may be present.
4. fluvial environment - in areas of high flow, most of the sediment is gravel and sand. Channel
sediments include gravel, waterlogged plant material, and chunks of partly consolidated mud.
Meandering streams usually contain few fossils, and although fine-grained may have root traces.
5. glacial environment - till on land and drift (with dropstones) floating in marine waters, unstratified,
unsorted pebbles, cobbles, and boulders with matrix of sand, silt, and clay. Some pebbles are
rounded, others faceted, striated, or polished. Sands and silts are angular or subangular. Also better
stratified from meltwater. Extremely fine rock flour. Fossils as whole shells, marine molluscs,
barnacles attached to pebbles, preserved ornamentation on shells, with forams and diatoms in a
matrix.
6. beach - fine to medium grade well sorted sand; reservoirs for petroleum and natural gas. Most
beaches are made of siliclastic sediments. Some modern beaches on carbonate shelves are made of
carbonate grains, consisting of skeletal fragments, ooids, and pellets. In breaker zones, coarse
saltate and fine suspends and winnows. Bioturbation is common. Upper shoreface Skolithos trace is
common. Middle shoreface vertical burrows may include Ophomorpha. Lower shoreface may include
shells and mud clasts and suspension-feeder and deposit-feeder traces, such as Thalassinoides.
7. delta - contain much of the siliclastic sediment transported to coastal zones; find petroleum and
natural gas, and coal. Different deltas (fluvial, wave, or tide dominated types) have different sediment
sizes. The upper delta plain is mainly fluvial sands, gravels, and muds, whereas lower delta plains
contain sands, muds, and organic debris. Subaqueous delta plains are partly sand, and possibly
gravels but grade to finer sands and silt. Prograde coarsening upward as sands advance seaward.
The sands or mud that contain maine fauna are bioturbated and may contain root traces. There are
no specific fossil taxa but may show a transition from freshwater to brackish to saltwater.
8. tidal flat - fine to medium grade ripple-laminated sands; fine sand and mud in midtidal flats. Marshy
and muddy to sandy. Mixed mud and sand with evaporites possible in arid to semiarid regions. Mainly
siliclastic. Oil and gas deposits. Ripples, dessicated and cracked muds unless destroyed by
vegetation. Also carbonate tidal flats with lime muds, sand-sized skeletal fragments, possibly ooids.
Gastropods, pelecypods, crustaceans, polychaete worms, forams, diatoms, stromatolitic blue-green
algae, fecal fellets, bioturbation, and burrows (Skolithos). Plant debris may form peat
9. barrier island - reservoirs for petroleum and natural gas, back-barrier lagoon and marsh deposits
overlapped by sandy back-barrier sands. Similar to beach environments.
10. shallow marine environment
11. lagoon - sediment sources include rivers, ocean, shores, and barriers, organic production,
chemical precipitation, and erosion. Mainly fine-grained as a low-energy environment. If siliclastic
input are low, chemical and biochemical processes dominate. May have evaporites with carbonate
muds and associated skeletal debris Algal mats may trap mud to form stromatolites with mudcracks.
Subtidal lagoon sediments may contain coal, shales, and carbonaceous materials and plant imprints.
12. continental shelf
13. organic mat
14. submarine fan
15. deep marine environment