on what basis can sedimentary rocks be identified?
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Sedimentary Rocks usually have layers and are made up of pieces of other rocks. The grain size that makes up the sedimentary rocks can be of any size. Microscopic as in silt, small as in sandstone and large as in conglomerate.
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There are several types of sedimentary rock that act as reservoirs & caprocks for oil & natural gas.\n\nReservoir rocks must have a certain degree of porosity (containing holes) & be permeable (able to move through). Some of these may include limestone, other carbonate rocks (such as what James said earlier), shale, & sandstone.\n\nOn top of these reservoir rocks are cap rocks. They must be impermeable as to not allow the oil/natural gas to escape. These can include limestone & shale as well.\n\nGeologists also look for certain physical structures such as salt domes & anticlines.\n\nSalt sometimes serves as caprock for oil reservoirs. Rising salt domes are sometimes dead giveaways for oil deposits. Many of these occur in the Gulf States.\n\nAnticlines are upward folds in rocks. Under the right conditions, anticlines serve as traps.\n\n:)
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Sedimentary rock forms relatively flat. Youngest always on top of the oldest. Just like a stack of newspapers if you were to accumulate them everyday.\n\nFolding from compressional stress is one. Rock is literally pushed together creating anticlines & synclines, upward folding & downward folding arches respectively.\n\nFaults can also do this. This can be accomplished through compressional (pushed together) or tensional (pulled apart) stresses.\n\nI am not too sure about this one but isostatic adjustment could possibly tilt rocks.\n\nHope this helps.\n\n:)
115642
You need to have special circumstances to find sandstone on top of a conglomerate. Typically not a marine environment because oceans and waters for example rivers sort the sediments to different grain sizes dependant on the speed of the current. Conglomerates are UN sorted sediments of many grain sizes. a common place to find this is in an environment where there were glaciers, they could drop unsorted sediments and then as the glacier recedes the outwash from streams can deposit layers of sand above it. I suppose there can be plenty other environments for this kind of deposition but I would say this is the most common. But it is definitely not the result of the oceans transgressing or regressing.
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There are actually many ways to date the rocks. One well-known way is carbon-dating.\n\nOne great site is:\nhttp://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/Anth3/Courseware/Chronology/01_Contents.html\n\nThis site has short summaries for each method-- no need to read a scientific journal artical for each method.
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OK, first geography is NOT geology *sigh*\n\nLook up carbon dating; you can either tell by the degradation of carbon or by basic layering (what's on the bottom is older than what's on the top).
81035
Shale, a sedimentary rock, is described as carbonaceous when it is interpreted or observed to contain organic matter. Commonly the organic matter originates at as plant debris which was deposited  with mud  that  through burial (pressure and heat) hardens  into a sedimentary rock called a shale.  Carbonaceous shales are often light gray to black in color and when carefully examined with a hand lens, one can see very fine bits and pieces of plant stems and leaves (microscopic fossil plants) which make up the carbonaceous organic matter of the shale. There is economic importance attached to this carbonaceous material in that it may be an important source of natural gas or methane which occurs within the earth.
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sell it on ebay if you find someone to purchase something like that with no certificate of authenticity from a geologist to support your assertions.
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Igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks all have the potential to become one of each of the other types of rock through the rock cycle. Igneous and metamorphic rocks can be broken down into rock fragments and cemented to form a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary or igneous rocks can undergo changes in temperature and pressure to form metamorphic rocks. And all three types can be melted and reformed as igneous rocks.
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The major lines of evidence are:\n1) the paleoenvironments the species lived in, as evidenced by the sedimentary rocks and other fossils\n2) analogy with related species\n3) functional morphology\n4) taphonomy and trackways\n\nThings you might look up are ammonites, trilobites etc
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1.) the species existed for a short span of geologic time - this is important because it makes it easier to identify certain strata. If they existed for longer periods of time then it would be harder to correlate rocks found in different places. It's like when you find it you say I KNOW this is definitely from ___ period.\n\n2.) they existed worldwide or over a very large area - in order to correlate the geologic age of rocks from continent to continent or across continents it is important that these specie exist all over the world.
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Erosion forms sand\nSand settles as sediment\nSediment hardens over time\nVoila, Sandstone
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Determination = resolve, to be determined.\nPossibly it could mean the structural analysis based on perceivable and quantifyable characteristics to determine which species a certain specimen belongs to. Like in the plant world.
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Applications of the concept that the present is the key to the past in the earth's history:\n1. volcanology: Today, volcanic rocks are generated at active volcanic centers--from the cooling of lava. We assume that when we map out similar rocks in older strata that they also formed at volcanic centers--even if there is no active volcanism in the area today. \n2. paleontology and paleoenvironment: We know that certain plants and animals live in the ocean and certain organisms live on land.  If we find fossils of marine organisms(like oysters, corals, ammonoids, shark teeth) in sedimentary rocks on high mountains, we interpret that the strata were originally deposited on the sea bottom that has since been uplifted.\n3. paleoenvironment: we know that modern desert areas covered by dunes have certain characteristics--that the dunes have certain types of crossbeds, the sand is well-sorted and well-rounded, for example. If we observe similar characteristics in sandstone beds of the Colorado Plateau, for example, that is considered evidence for an arid desert environment in the past.\n4. Modern plate boundaries are associated with major fault systems, certain rocks types, etc. In  the Sierra Nevada, geologists have mapped out ancient fault boundaries that put marine sedimentary rocks against dissimilar volcanic arc-related rocks. The patterns they have mapped out are considered evidence that the plate boundary of North America was once a convergent margin located farther east than it is today.
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well, do you have access to a stone saw?  Look for crystalline structure inside of the object.  Also determine it's specific gravity, and you can look it up on the jpl web site.  First though is it metal, magnetic? Or a rock.
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Rock is a naturally occurring aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids. Rocks are classified by mineral and chemical composition; the texture of the constituent particles; and also by the processes that formed them. These indicators separate rocks into igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.\n\nMinerals are natural compounds formed through geological processes. The term "mineral" encompasses not only the material's chemical composition, but also the mineral's structure. Minerals range in composition from pure elements and simple salts to very complex silicates with thousands of known forms (organic compounds are usually excluded)
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No. The basic geological column was first realised by creationists such as Rev. Sedgewick and William Smith, following logical rules such as the principle of superposition (sediments were deposited on top of older sediments). They observed that layers of different ages contained some different fossils which could aid in recognising the layers, without always having to physically trace them along. This was well before the Origin of Species.\n\nNowdays, the geological column is dated by absolute radiometric methods (eg. Uranium-Lead and Potassium-Argon dating). There are hundreds of radiometrically-dated tie-points in the geological column. Index fossils, along with other methods such as magnetostratigraphy, are used to correlate, relatively, between different locations, and to the radiometrically-determined time scale.