Processes of Sedimentary

Rock Formation
 Sedimentary rocks form from materials that first existed in older rocks.
Whatever those earlier rocks were, and we can often determine a lot about
them from what’s in the sediment, are called the “source rocks” of the
sediment.

This short presentation serves to introduce the various steps in taking material
from a parent and making a sedimentary rock of it. Those steps are:

1) Weathering

2) Erosion

3) Transport

4) Deposition

5) Lithification
1) Weathering
You should recognize the igneous rock on the left. It is one possible source rock
for the rock on the right, and the only possible igneous parent.

The pink in the two rocks results from different minerals. On the left the obvious
large pink crystals are something you have already seen. On the right the pink
is more diffuse: not large crystals but microscopic ones that coat the grains of
sand in the rock.
 K Feldspar (pink)

Na Plagioclase (white)

Biotite (black)

Quartz (light gray)

The source rock is granite because of the

phaneritic texture and the minerals
present, all of which are low temperature
igneous minerals according to Bowen’s
reaction series.
 This rock is made of sand-sized
grains tightly held together. The
name of such a rock is sandstone.

“Sand” is the name of the material if

it is not tightly held together in rock.

“Gravel” comprises bigger grains

than sand.

“Mud” comprises smaller grains.

The obvious crystals in the sandstone

are all quartz. The pink color results
from a thin rind of the mineral hematite
on each of the sand-sized quartz
grains. Hematite is chemically the
same as rust – iron oxide.
In making the sandstone from the granite a couple of obvious changes must occur.

First, everything but the quartz must be separated out and have a different fate than the quartz.

Second, the grain size of the quartz must be reduced from around 6mm (the coin is 2.5cm) to
around 1/2mm.

(NOTE: There are source rocks with smaller quartz crystals, and gravels can have bigger quartz
grains than this sand, but reduction in size is the rule and not the exception in going from source
to sediment. Source crystal sizes are virtually never preserved.)
The alterations to the source material that happen in the process of forming sediment are collectively
called weathering. It is called that because exposure to weather at or near the Earth’s surface is
required to accomplish any weathering.

There are numerous ways that weathering can occur, but they fall naturally into one of two
categories. We will not explore detailed ways that each of these two can be accomplished but if you
are interested you can easily find more material on the topic.

First, any change that breaks the source rock into smaller pieces without altering the minerals
present, or the chemistry of the minerals present, is called mechanical weathering or physical
weathering.

Second, any change that does affect the mineral or chemical content of the source is called
chemical weathering.

The results of these two things are very different. In the first case you end up with pieces of the
source rock and/or of its constituent minerals. In the second you end up destroying minerals and
creating new ones from the residue.

Both types of weathering generally occur hand-in-hand on a rock but certain conditions favor one
and different conditions favor the other. Usually one or the other predominates in a particular place.

Chemical processes all require water and relatively warm temperatures so chemical weathering
tends to predominate where there is plenty of rain and warmth, at least in summer. Mechanical
weathering predominates in very cold or very dry climates – glaciers and deserts, for example.
There are some sandstones (less than ~10%
of all we know of) that do not show the
degree of mineral loss that the quartz
sandstone in the previous examples shows.

What might allow this?

Qtz

K spar

Arkose has quartz and feldspar.

K spar Lithic sandstone has quartz,

feldspar, and other minerals in it.

Qtz

Plag

Biotite
If mechanical weathering is strongly predominant in the parent’s region
then all the minerals might survive and produce a lithic sandstone. (Some
of the minerals in lithic sandstone are highly susceptible to chemical
weathering.)

If mechanical weathering predominates but there is some chemical

weathering then maybe only a couple of the minerals survive and arkose
results. (Quartz and K feldspar resist chemical weathering better than the
others.)

For a quartz sandstone to result, chemical weathering has to predominate.

(Quartz is the only one of the common minerals in granite that resists
chemical weathering.)

Because quartz sandstone is far more abundant in the world than the
other types it stands to reason that chemical weathering is more common
than purely mechanical weathering.
 So what happens to the other minerals in granite if quartz is the only one that
survives chemical weathering?

The other minerals all contain aluminum in their structure. They are aluminosilicates. In
part they all behave the same way, but if there is iron as well then something else occurs too.

The feldspars do not contain iron. They are

weathered by a process that strips ions from their
structure leaving behind only aluminum and silicon
oxides/hydroxides – clay minerals. Clay minerals
are tiny sheet silicates (like mica). Because
feldspars (and other aluminosilicates) are the
predominant minerals in crustal rocks that serve as
parents for sediment, clay is the most common
mineral in sediments and sedimentary rocks.

The ions that are removed are the cations (K+, Na+,
and perhaps a little Ca++) and SiO4-4 as Si-O
tetrahedra. These ions are dissolved in the water
that does the weathering and removed to wherever
that water goes next.

The biotite is a ferromagnesian aluminosilicate – it

does contain iron. The iron ions are oxidized
(rusted, essentially) to make the stable iron oxide
hematite. The aluminosilicate part of the mineral
becomes clay. Si-O tetrahedra, and any K ions that
might have been present are removed in solution.

The quartz survives. (Unless the weathering is

ridiculously severe.)
 CHEMICAL SEDIMENT

Dissolved ions from chemical weathering

(feldspars, biotite)

DETRITAL SEDIMENT

Clay minerals
(feldspars, biotite)

Hematite
(biotite)

Resistant minerals
(quartz
 2) Erosion
&
3) Transport
 Erosion and transport are conceptually related but they should be treated as
separate things. Erosion is the initial movement that begins the transport
process, but that transport process can be a very lengthy and complex thing.
When we think about erosion we are generally interested in the effects on
what’s left behind – the eroded landscape, but sedimentologists are interested
in it as the start of the process or transport.

Both erosion and transport are accomplished by one (or more, in the case of
transport) of four things:

1) Gravity, acting alone,

2) Ice (glaciers), moving in response to gravity,

3) Wind, moving in response to gravity, or

4) Water, moving in response to gravity, wind, or tidal forces.

Weathered material that has not been moved from the site of weathering is
called “regolith”.

As soon as it begins moving (at the moment it is eroded) we begin to call it

sediment.

That sediment is of two main types. Detrital sediment is particles of

weathered rock – mud, sand, or gravel. It includes the clay minerals and
hematite formed by chemical weathering, the particles that resist chemical
weathering, like quartz, and the residue of mechanical weathering. Once
eroded these materials can be transported by any of the transport
mechanisms – gravity, ice, water, or wind or by some combination of them.

Chemical sediment is the dissolved ions produced by chemical weathering.

These can include essentially any ion from any weatherable mineral, but K,
Na, Ca, Mg and SiO4 are the most common ones. Because they are
dissolved they can only be moved by water.
An earlier slide gives us a good idea about the types of materials that
can be eroded and transported away from a granite source. Let’s look
at it again.

CHEMICAL SEDIMENT

Dissolved ions from chemical weathering

(feldspars, biotite)

DETRITAL SEDIMENT

Clay minerals
(feldspars, biotite)

Hematite
(biotite)

Resistant minerals
(quartz
Remember that this rock is
sandstone with two minerals in it.

Assuming a granite source rock,

1) Where did the quartz come

from?

2) Where did the hematite come

from?
An earlier slide gives us a good idea about the types of materials that can
be eroded and transported away from a granite source. Let’s look at it
again.

In this sandstone we see only quartz (a resistant mineral) and hematite (an oxidation product
of a ferromagnesian mineral). What happened to the other weathered materials?

???
CHEMICAL SEDIMENT

Dissolved ions from chemical weathering

(feldspars, biotite)

DETRITAL SEDIMENT

Clay minerals
(feldspars, biotite)

Hematite
(biotite)

Resistant minerals
(quartz)
4) Deposition
At some point whatever is
transporting sedimentary material
loses the ability to transport it any
farther. A falling or rolling stone
reaches the bottom of a hill. Ice
melts from the downhill end of a
glacier. A mountain stream flows
out onto a flatland and slows down.
The wind quits blowing.

Additionally, sediment may build up

and cover older sediment making it
impossible to move the older
sediment even if the strength of the
transport system returns.
The sandstone in our examples so far was deposited on a
beach in what is now the western Appalachian Mountains
(the Valley and Ridge) during the Silurian period.

The sand washed off an older mountain chain in rivers and

All of these things mean that the
sediment load of the transport
system must be dropped or
deposited.
travelled in those rivers to the shore. There the sand was
moved along the shore by waves. Eventually enough sand
was delivered to the shore by the streams that the waves
abandoned this sand in order to move other sand, this was
covered up, and eventually it was hardened into this rock.
 The streams that were able to move sand all
the way to the coast were not strong enough
to move gravel that far. This rock is mostly
quartz gravel with quartz sand grains between
the pebbles. Hematite (and a similar yellow
iron oxide) are obvious as well.

This rock was deposited on the bed of a fast-

flowing stream. (Probably not a Silurian
Stream – I’m not sure where this rock is
from.) The vigorous motion has rounded the
originally sharp edges of the hard quartz
pebbles because of their impacts with each
Conglomerate – a detrital other.
rock made of rounded
pebbles. Gravels like this are generally abandoned
(deposited) far upstream of where finer sands
accumulate. The stream sorts the grains by
size, depositing them in different places.
If coarser detrital sediment (like gravel) is dropped earlier from a transport system than finer
sediment (like sand) then you can probably guess that even finer sediment (like mud, including clay
minerals) will be transported even farther.

Mud is clay and silt combined. These fine materials are quite easy to transport and so do not wind
up on beaches. Instead they tend to be carried out onto the continental shelf (or even beyond, to
the deep ocean) and finally settle there.

Rocks that are made of mud are called mudstone unless they display very thin bedding. In that
case they are called shale. The difference is the degree to which burial pressure has compacted
and re-aligned the clay minerals, which are like tiny mica flakes.

Shale does have thin layering. This one is black

Mudstone has no thin layering. This
one is made of the clay mineral
kaolinite and is mined in Macon
County near Andersonville.
because it contains a great deal of un-oxidized
organic matter from the organisms (mostly
plankton, not dinosaurs) that lived in the sea above
where it was deposited. The rocks that are being
“fracked” to produce natural gas are black shales
and look like this.
The chemical sediment is, of course, not deposited in the same way that detrital sediment is. Instead of
settling as particles these ions must recombine to form new minerals. They can only do this when the
chemical environment is right. The energy that moves and deposits detrital sediment is not as important
as the water chemistry that allows precipitation of the mew minerals.

There are two ways that precipitation can occur: with and without the influence of organisms. Rocks
made from biologically precipitated material are called “biochemical”. Rocks made from minerals that
precipitate directly from the water are called simply “chemical” or “orthochemical”.

CHEMICAL SEDIMENT

Dissolved ions from chemical weathering

???
(feldspars, biotite)

DETRITAL SEDIMENT

Clay minerals
(feldspars, biotite)

Hematite
(biotite)

Resistant minerals
(quartz)
The most common biochemical rock is limestone. The color is variable, ranging from pure white to
pink to black. What is usually evident (though only microscopically in most cases) is that the rock is a
hardened accumulation of fossils. The large disk-shaped things in the rock on the left and the
obvious shells in the rock on the right are all shells or other skeletal material of marine organisms.

The mineral in limestone is calcite, which you have seen. Its formula is CaCO3. Most limestone is
marine because that is where it is easiest to get Ca ions to make the calcite. The carbonate is easy –
it forms from atmospheric CO2 dissolved in the water.
 This is another common biochemical “rock”. Like obsidian it is not truly a rock
because it contains no minerals. All that is here is organic carbon.
Microscopic slides generally reveal the organic material to be mostly or
entirely plant material and this rock typically occurs with shales that are
loaded with plant fossils. It there is mud coming in the plants are preserved
as fossils. If there is no mud then the plants are preserved as coal.

Anthracite coal is a higher

temperature more
compressed version of
coal that is often treated Bituminous coal is the
as a metamorphic rock. I normal, clearly
don’t agree because the sedimentary version of
rocks found with it are the “rock”. The fossils are
typical sedimentary rocks generally much more
(shale and sandstone). easily found in this lower
T&P version.
In some cases orthochemical rocks can precipitate directly from water as brand
new material where there was previously none. This is most common in places
where the concentration of ions can be driven high enough to force
precipitation.

As a general rule ions cannot build up to this level so the concentration is

generally accomplished by decreasing the water in the solution, not increasing
the number of ions.

Think about the beach for a minute. If you’ve ever been in the water at a sea
beach you have almost certainly accidentally gotten some in your mouth.
What’s in the water?

What you taste is, of course, dissolved Na and Cl ions – salt. There are other
“salts” as well – other dissolved ions, including Ca, Mg, K, SiO4, etc., etc.
Indeed, all the ions that weather out of source rocks of any kind are found in
seawater in varying amounts. The Na and Cl predominate so they are most
noticeable in the taste.

Why do you suppose the “Great Salt Lake” has that name? Desert lakes like
that also contain a lot of dissolved ions, often far more than seawater does.
This is rock salt. It is from a sedimentary deposit that accumulated in a
coastal bay with little connection to the open sea. Seawater could get into
the bay through narrow inlets, but it was difficult to get it back out.

Once in the bay the desert climate that prevailed during deposition
evaporated enough of the water (only pure water evaporates) leaving a high
concentration of Na and Cl ions in the water to the point of precipitation. This
happens today in shallow bays around the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea,
and seasonally in Laguna Madre on the Texas coast.

Other evaporite minerals

include gypsum (plaster
of Paris), borax, Epsom
salts, and sylvite (0
sodium salt).

The evaporation required

to form these minerals
can occur in coastal bays
or desert lakes.
Other orthochemical rocks form as the water they are in interacts with some
pre-existing rock and replaces its original minerals with new ones.

The rock below is called chert. It is made of microcrystalline quartz. (It has
conchoidal fracture and scratches glass, etc.) It is very common in this part of
the state where it is often found as a replacement of limestone. The original
calcite shells and surrounding matter are often still obvious but they are now
quartz instead of calcite.

Native Americans found this hard rock ideal for making spear and bird points,
scrapers, and so on. Non-native Americans found it useful to replace the flints
in their flintlock rifles. Indeed, flint is simply the name for a black chert,
common in England, where “flintlock” “flints” were named well before they were
brought to America.

None of the chert in this area is black, so it

is technically not flint. Settlers in the region
did not draw that distinction though when
they named our river the “Flint River”.