Sedimentology encompasses the study of modern sediments such as sand, silt, and clay, and the processes that result in their formation, transport, deposition and diagenesis. Sedimentologists apply their understanding of modern processes to interpret geologic history through observations of sedimentary rocks and sedimentary structures.
Sedimentology includes the study of modern sediments such as sand, silt and clay 2. Sedimentologists apply their understanding of modern processes to interpretive sedimentary rocks and sedimentary structures. Sedimentary rocks cover up to 75% of the earth's surface, a record of most of the earth and house the fossil record. Sedimentology is often linked to stratigraphy, a study of the physical and temporal relationships between rock layers or strata. Determining the basis of the processes that affect the processes of the earth today is the same as how the sedimentary characteristics of the rock were formed. By comparing modern sand dunes to dunes preserved in ancient Aeolian sandstones, geologists are reconstructing past environments.
The aim of sedimentology, studying sediments, is to derive information on the depositional conditions which acted to deposit the rock unit, and the relation of the individual rock units in a basin into a coherent understanding of the evolution of the sedimentary sequences and basins, and thus, the Earth's geological history as a whole.