Sedimentary structures remain a foundation for interpreting most ancient depositional environments. The product of physical, biological, or chemical processes either during or following deposition, they almost uniquely attest in the stratigraphic record to these processes. Most sedimentary structures are sufficiently complex as to defy communication by other than visual representation. Our ability to effectively utilize structures depends in large part on the visual images that we retain. An atlas with high-quality photographs can be a fundamental resource.

Gas and fluid vents are being observed with increasing frequency in a variety of depositional settings in the modern day deep-sea. In some cases, these sedimentary features are a result of the destabilization of gas clathrate hydrates below the sediment water interface. However, documented evidence of sedimentary structures related to these processes in the ancient rock record is limited. This study finds evidence for fluidized sediment injection in a succession of fine-grained sedimentary rocks that outcrops in the Basin and Range Province of the south-western United States. These rocks are interpreted to have been deposited in a fault controlled embayment, or half-graben, that formed on the continental shelf of the paleocontinent Laurentia. In this embayment, event deposits comprising sediment gravity flows and carbonate biosomes punctuate thinly bedded muddy to fine-grained sediments interpreted to have been deposited by suspension settling and traction. Unique to the biosomes are features that indicate syn-depositional deformation triggered by seismic activity. Seismic activity is also responsible for increasing pore-pressure of the sediments constrained by the dense, micritic biosomes resulting in fluid injection from sediments below the sediment-water interface. Petrographic and geochemical analyses of these preserved fluidization structures indicates that these fluids may have contained liquid or gaseous carbon dioxide. While these features indicate that fluidized sediment injection was an important process in the early diagenetic history of these sediments, clear evidence for the presence of gas clathrate hydrates has not been found.

Over the years, many papers on carbonate diagenesis have been published in Sedimentology, the journal of the International Association of Sedimentologists. This volume presents a collection of these papers with a commentary. The emphasis of the book is on the diagenesis of shallow-marine carbonate sediments and the editors have chosen 12 papers which are reproduced in full. To widen the scope of this volume the abstracts for another 16 papers are presented. These provide further examples of diagenetic studies and help to extend the coverage of the book. The reprints and abstracts are divided into three groups, dealing with marine, meteoric and burial diagenesis respectively. Each collection is preceded by a commentary which briefly summarizes the topic and introduces the reprints and abstracts to come

This textbook provides an overview of the origin and preservation of carbonate sedimentary rocks. The focus is on limestones and dolostones and the sediments from which they are derived. The approach is general and universal and draws heavily on fundamental discoveries, arresting interpretations, and keystone syntheses that have been developed over the last five decades. The book is designed as a teaching tool for upper level undergraduate classes, a fundamental reference for graduate and research students, and a scholarly source of information for practicing professionals whose expertise lies outside this specialty. The approach is rigorous, with every chapter being designed as a separate lecture on a specific topic that is encased within a larger scheme. The text is profusely illustrated with all colour diagrams and images of rocks, subsurface cores, thin sections, modern sediments, and underwater seascapes. Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/james/carbonaterocks

This is the book you need to improve your interpretations of carbonates. Using a systematic treatment of the entire subject of carbonate depositional environments, this unique book is specifically designed for use by the non-specialist -- the petroleum geologist or field geologist -- who uses carbonate depositional environments in facies reconstructions and environmental intepretations. This classic work, covering settings from non-marine to deep water, focuses on the recognition of depositional environments with extenive use of color diagrams and photographs of sedimentary structures and facies assemblages. Although the ultimate purpose of this text is to improve exploration for oil, gas, and mineral deposits, it also includes environments not normally considered to be particularly prospective for oil and gas in an attempt to provide as complete a framework as possible for recognition of environments. Suitable for use as a textbook, this book is also an invaluable reference fo the specialist or advanced graduate student. It provides perspective on large-scale influences on carbonate depositional envionments such as tectonic patterns, fluctuations of sea level, variations of climate, and evolutionary patterns of organisms. --