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Linear Structures

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Paleocurrents and Basin Analysis

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Abstract

In the broadest sense, lineation is a descriptive, nongenetic term, for any kind of linear structure, on or within a rock (Cloos, 1946, p. 1). Our concern here, however, is the primary lineation of sedimentary rocks acquired during the depositional process or imposed on the sediment while it was still in the environment of deposition. Lineations are of several types and include the preferred linear arrangement of elongate skeletal elements, plant fragments, or nonspherical clasts of any kind. Such preferential arrangement of the framework elements of a deposit is usually called the depositional “fabric” Lineation includes also the various features which are found at the interface between beds such as the slide marks, produced by movement of one bed over another — in reality a species of slickensides, and the various groovings and striations of mudstones, preserved only as casts on the sole of the overlying sandstone bed. Various other asymmetric sole markings on sandstone beds also impart a lineation to the bedding surface. Included here are the striations and groovings on those surfaces which underlie till or tillite. These glacial striations are in one sense tectonic — i.e. they are produced by an overthrust (of glacial ice) but, inasmuch as they have been systematically mapped to reconstruct the pattern of ice-movement, they are indeed a paleocurrent structure. Also included are those internal linear structures observed when certain sandstones are split or parted along bedding planes. Such parting lineation is a very common feature of some sand facies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indiana University, USA

    Paul Edwin Potter (Associate Professor of Geology)

  2. The Johns Hopkins University, USA

    F. J. Pettijohn (Professor of Geology)

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  1. Paul Edwin Potter
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Potter, P.E., Pettijohn, F.J. (1963). Linear Structures. In: Paleocurrents and Basin Analysis. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01020-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01020-4_5

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