Detrital refers to mineral grains and rock fragments, such as sand grains or pebbles, that are produced during the weathering process and transported to the site of deposition as particles. The most abundant detrital minerals in sediments are quartz and clays. Quartz is an abundant mineral in many rocks.

There are three different types of sedimentary rocks: clastic, organic (biological), and chemical. Clastic sedimentary rocks, like sandstone, form from clasts, or pieces of other rock.

Sedimentary rocks are economically important in that they can easily be used as construction material because they are soft and easy to cut. Sedimentary rocks often form porous and permeable reservoirs in sedimentary basins in which water and important minerals such as oil can be found.

Sedimentary rocks are classified based on their texture and composition. Detrital sediment has a clastic (broken) texture. Chemical and organic sediments have a non-clastic texture, and are classified based solely on their composition.

Salt around salt lakes and limestone from sea bottoms are examples of these chemical sedimentary rocks. The resulting particles settle out of water or air (clastic rocks such as sandstone and mudstone) or the resulting chemicals precipitate from concentrated solutions (non‑clastic rocks such as limestone and salt).

Some sedimentary rocks are bound together with calcite or dolomite cement. Some conglomerates and breccias contain clasts of carbonate rocks or minerals that react with acid. Many shales were deposited in marine environments and contain enough calcium carbonate to produce a vigorous acid fizz.

What is the difference between mudstone and siltstone? “Mudstone” is a fine-grained, dark gray sedimentary rock, which is formed from silt and clay and is similar to shale but has a less laminations, while “siltstone” can be defined as a fine-grained sedimentary rock which mainly consists of consolidated silt.

The presence of mud cracks in a sedimentary rock is a sign that the rock was deposited: in a region that was drying. If all of the grains in a sedimentary rock are about the same size, shape, and composition, the rock can be characterized as: well sorted.

They indicate an environment in which sediment got wet and then dried out. Such an environment could be a flood plain, or tidal flat. A conglomerate formed from sediment that probaby traveled far from its source, giving it the opportunity to become rounded.

Even in the deep sea, most ocean sediments can contain microfossils—the remains of tiny organisms that lived in the water and settled down onto the seabed after their death. These include foraminifera and radiolarians, which are types of zooplankton—tiny creatures that eat other types of plankton to survive.

On the seafloor, sediments are thinnest near spreading centers (young seafloor) and thicker away from the ridge, where the seafloor is older and has more time to accumulate. Sediments are also much thickest near continents.

Large sediment-built plains commonly occur in the Atlantic Ocean, where turbidity currents flow from the base of a continent to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Deposits produced by turbidity currents are called turbidites. Most of them consist of sands and silts, but a few are composed of gravels.

that make up the ocean floor can come from several sources. Weathering causes rocks found on land to break down into sand, silt, and clay. These particles can be carried to the ocean by wind or water. Once in the ocean, these particles sink to the bottom and become part of the ocean sediment.