Sediment Types
The ultimate source of these sediments is weathering and erosion of rocks on land.
What are Terrigenous Sediments?
Sediments originating from outer space.
What are Cosmogenic Particles?
The degree to which sediments are uniform in size.
What is Sorting?
This area has the lowest sediment volume but the greater sediment surface area. Sediment rates are approximately 1cm per 1000 years.
What is the open ocean?
The scientific theory that hypothesizes the continents were once all part of a large land mass and have since broken up and moved apart.
What is Continental drift?
Sediments composed from the shells of diatoms and radiolarians.
What is Biogenic Silica?
In some areas, in the ocean, this type of process leads to the formation of sediments. For instance, when seawater evaporates, minerals like halite (rock salt) can crystallize and settle.
What are Chemical Processes?
Sediments with a wide range of grain sizes.
What are Poorly-Sorted Sediments?
Ocean currents and waves influence how sediments are transported and deposited. The energy of these forces determines where and how sediments accumulate.
What are Hydrodynamic Forces?
The supercontinent that existed millions of years ago.
What is Pangea?
Sediments composed primarily of calcium carbonate
What are Carbonate Sediments?
Component of sediments brought into the ocean from outside and consists of terrigenous, volcanic, and cosmogenic material.
What is Detrital Sediments?
Sediments with a narrow range of grain sizes.
What are Well-Sorted Sediments?
Process that deposits dead organisms and other material like calcium carbonate and silica shells on the ocean floor as sediment.
What are biological processes?
Fossil evidence of Continental drift from the eastern coast of South America and the western coast of Africa.
What is the Meza soros--A reptile that lived in shallow freshwater in only two places on Earth--the eastern coast of South America and the western coast of Africa?
Type of sediment composed of minerals brought into the ocean mostly by wind, as dust and ash.
What is volcanic sediment?
This creates sediments by the breakdown of rocks on land which rivers and streams transport to the ocean, where they are deposited.
What is Weathering and Erosion?
This sorting variable can be reflected by the degree of rounding of the particles, the amount of sorting, and the composition of the sediment.
What is Maturity?
The area where most of the sediment can be found, sometimes as much as 15 KM deep.
What is near the mouths of rivers or near/along the continents?
Evidence of continental drift on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
What are mountain ranges of similar geological composition in North America and along the coast of Europe?
These components are oceanic inorganic minerals that precipitate directly from the seawater, either in the water column or in the sediment after burial. These minerals make up only a small fraction of deep-sea sediments today, but in special environments and certain geological times, they comprise the bulk of the sedimentary sequence.
What are Authigenic Sediments?
These sediment components are oceanic inorganic minerals that precipitate directly from the seawater, either in the water column or in the sediment after burial. These minerals make up only a small fraction of deep-sea sediments today, but in special environments and certain geological times, they comprise the bulk of the sedimentary sequence.
What are Authigenic?
These components are one of the most important constituents of marine sediments. As the name implies, these form directly or indirectly through biological activity
What is Biogenic?
Scientists follow this rule when classifying marine sediments.
What is the 30% rule?
The name of the German Meteorologist who proposed the theory of Continental Drift.
Who is Alfred Wegner?