How to Use sedimentary in a Sentence

sedimentary

adjective
  • Some of the lake water seeped into the rich soil, then trickled through the pores of the sedimentary rock.
    Brett Simpson, The Atlantic, 23 Jan. 2023
  • The NSB contains some of the oldest layers of sedimentary rock in the world.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 1 Mar. 2017
  • The statue was carved from limestone, a sedimentary rock not found in the area.
    Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 29 Aug. 2022
  • Any fossils found in the sedimentary rock must be younger than the ash below and older than the ash above.
    Scott Hershberger, Scientific American, 4 Aug. 2020
  • At one turn, his path was blocked by a large boulder, a hunk of sedimentary rock.
    Alexis Soloski, New York Times, 15 Feb. 2024
  • The stones range from 7 to 14 feet in height and are composed of flagstone and sandstone, both types of sedimentary rock.
    Dan Falk, Discover Magazine, 6 Apr. 2024
  • What might look like a group of tiny cells could be some kind of sedimentary structure.
    Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Mar. 2020
  • Over eons, the softer sedimentary rocks around the immense bulge of hard stone washed away.
    Mark Jenkins, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Apr. 2024
  • But for me, this novel, even more so than The God of Small Things probably, is like a sedimentary rock.
    Isaac Chotiner, Slate Magazine, 6 June 2017
  • The record-low water levels are exposing sedimentary rocks that haven’t been seen since the 1930s when the Hoover Dam was built and Lake Mead filled.
    Rachel Ramirez, CNN, 12 Oct. 2022
  • Chert is a subgroup of sedimentary rock and includes flint, opal, and jasper.
    Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 5 Feb. 2020
  • The Mars rover's current focus is drilling cores and examing the sedimentary rocks around the delta area.
    Megan Marples, CNN, 9 June 2022
  • On top of it, a layer of sedimentary rock rich in iron ore formed nearly two billion years ago, when the region was ocean floor.
    Reid Forgrave, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2017
  • Around 20 million years ago, as the Arabian plate drove under the Eurasian, a belt of sedimentary rock lunged, as fast as rock can lunge, into the Miocene air.
    New York Times, 20 Apr. 2022
  • This fossil was found in 1999 at the site of a sedimentary basin in northwest Madagascar.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 18 Dec. 2020
  • Further, as the researchers note, layers of light-colored volcanic ash can be found buried in the sedimentary rock.
    Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 12 May 2022
  • Over the eons, the Medusae Fossae Formation steadily eroded as winds swept over the soft red sedimentary rock.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 26 July 2018
  • The fossil was trapped in sedimentary rock that had hardened when lava flows caked and baked the Isle of Skye during the Paleocene, about 66 to 56 million years ago.
    National Geographic, 5 Sep. 2016
  • The fossil was trapped in sedimentary rock that had hardened when lava flows caked and baked the Isle of Skye during the Paleocene, about 66 to 56 million years ago.
    Michael Greshko, National Geographic, 5 Sep. 2016
  • London is a city where era is piled upon era, like sedimentary rock.
    New York Times, 23 Dec. 2021
  • The rocks in the delta are most likely sedimentary, trapping and preserving precious layers of silt from the river that once flowed into the crater's lake.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 15 Dec. 2021
  • If such sedimentary rock was ever there, it’s gone now.
    Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 23 Nov. 2022
  • The diagonal layers etched across the base of Mount Sharp appear very similar to the sedimentary rock strata of the Grand Canyon.
    Tanya Lewis, WIRED, 28 Aug. 2012
  • Onderdonk said that layers of sedimentary rock in the area are tilted toward the sea.
    Liz Kreutz, NBC News, 23 Feb. 2024
  • This one-mile loop will take you past the multicolored sedimentary rock layers of Blue Mesa.
    Jonathan Olivier, Outside Online, 10 Oct. 2022
  • Outside the crater, sedimentary rocks lie on top of deeper granites, but this relationship is flipped in the peak ring.
    Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 27 May 2020
  • The sedimentary layers banding the rock were a reminder that the Aral’s retreat is a small-scale echo of a more titanic draining.
    Henry Wismayer, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Aug. 2022
  • Bighorn Lake is a fisherman’s paradise as well as a watery highway that allows you to float through gorges in the shadow of 1,000-foot walls of sedimentary rock.
    Amy Tara Koch, New York Times, 23 June 2017
  • Faith indeed looms large over the Permian Basin, a sedimentary basin rich with black gold that gave rise to the Texas oil legend as well as the Bush family dynasty.
    Marco Della Cava, USA TODAY, 1 Sep. 2019
  • But sneaking throughout the sedimentary layers like a nest of snakes are the slippery bands that are responsible for a good bit of what’s falling away: volcanic ash.
    Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sedimentary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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