Rip-up clasts The tiniest sedimentary grains are clay minerals. The little grain fragments are so sm
Rip-up clastsThe tiniest sedimentary grains are clay minerals. The little grain fragments are so small that when one clay mineral grain touches another, electrostatic forces are enough to help them stick together. Clay minerals can literally stick to each other based on the forces between electrons and protons in 2 adjacent grains. A pile of clay minerals will stick together due to electrostatics and it will take a lot of energy to pull it apart.The reddish zones in this rock are rip up clasts from Virginia. 750 million years ago they were layers of clay-rich sediment. At that time, the Earth either totally or nearly totally froze over twice – events we have nicknamed “Snowball Earth”. If the Earth totally froze over, it would remain frozen for literally millions of years, but volcanic activity would continue whether or not the planet was frozen. Eventually, volcanoes would release so much CO2 to create a greenhouse effect strong enough to melt the ice. Once the ice melted, suddenly the Earth would snap to an ultrahot planet, a super-greenhouse fed by all the CO2 in the atmosphere. The energy in that superheated atmosphere would feed ultra-strong storms; the sort that could rip up these clasts of lake sediment and redeposit them.Similar rip-up clasts are found throughout the geologic record, so many storms possess the power to rip apart clay rich clasts. These ones are unique – from the strong storms after the Sturtian, the first of the 2 “Snowball Earth” glaciations. Note now the rip-up clasts so closely resemble the clay-rich layers found just below them – those layers are the source of the clasts.-JBBImage Credit: James St. Johnhttps://flic.kr/p/NvJV65 -- source link
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