Sedimentology and sedimentary basins: from turbulence to tectonics / Седиментология и осадочные бассейны: от турбулентности до тектоники

The noun sediment comes to the English language from the Latin root sedimentum, meaning settling or sinking down,aform ofthe verb sedere,to sit orsettle. In earth and environmental sciences, sediment has a wide context that includes many forms of organic and mineral matter. In Part 1 we look more deeply at the origins of the sediment that occurs on and under the surface of the solid planets and which may be used to infer past environmental conditions and changes. Sediment accumulations may be grandly viewed as the great stratal archive of past surface environments, or more basically as‘dirt’. There has been sediment on the surface of the Earth since the Archaean, with the oldest known sediment grains dating from at least 4.4Ga (Part 1 Fig. 1). Sediment also mantles the surface of many other planets and their satellites, notably Mars, Venus and Saturn’s moon, Titan. <...>