How to Use sedimentary in a Sentence

sedimentary

adjective
  • What might look like a group of tiny cells could be some kind of sedimentary structure.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Mar. 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
  • London is a city where era is piled upon era, like sedimentary rock.
    — New York Times, 23 Dec. 2021
  • The statue was carved from limestone, a sedimentary rock not found in the area.
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 29 Aug. 2022
  • Over eons, the softer sedimentary rocks around the immense bulge of hard stone washed away.
    — Mark Jenkins, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Apr. 2024
  • Chert is a subgroup of sedimentary rock and includes flint, opal, and jasper.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 5 Feb. 2020
  • 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
  • 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
  • In addition to steatite, sedimentary stones and basalt were also carved for pipes.
    — Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 14 June 2025
  • 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
  • Most of the islands are composed of sedimentary rock, though some are volcanic in origin.
    — Ethan Teekah, Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Mar. 2026
  • Columbus could barely feel it through the sedimentary layers of pain.
    — Karan Mahajan, The New Republic, 26 Mar. 2018
  • Don’t bother looking for fossils; almost no sedimentary rock has had time to form.
    — Literary Hub, 11 Feb. 2026
  • The land there was once covered by a sea, which left behind sedimentary rock—a mixture of sandstone and shale known as molasse.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 2 Apr. 2025
  • All three of these cutting-edge techniques involve the study of sedimentary deposits.
    — Stephanie Edwards, Discover Magazine, 15 Apr. 2025
  • Onderdonk said that layers of sedimentary rock in the area are tilted toward the sea.
    — Liz Kreutz, NBC News, 23 Feb. 2024
  • Here, any sedimentary layers that settle to the bed of the brine pool remain exquisitely intact.
    — Christina Shaw, Fox News, 21 Feb. 2025
  • 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
  • Mars boasts the only such sedimentary rocks yet seen anywhere beyond Earth.
    — The Economist, 16 Dec. 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
  • 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
  • Scientists think that in some rocks seen on Mars, these spherules form when groundwater passed through pores in sedimentary rocks.
    — Daisy Dobrijevic, Space.com, 13 Aug. 2025
  • 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
  • These low lying windswept islands are composed of volcanic and sedimentary rock, whilst the soil of the main island is mostly peat.
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Treasures lie buried in the sedimentary layers of the streaming services.
    — Joe Morgenstern, WSJ, 29 July 2021
  • Jadarite is found as white nodules hosted by dolomitic marls and shales deposited within a closed volcano–sedimentary basin.
    — New Atlas, 4 Aug. 2025
  • This sample came from some of the youngest sedimentary rocks the mission has investigated to date.
    — Amy J. Williams, The Conversation, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Clearing land and removing the volcanic or sedimentary rocks just to plant the vineyard is harder.
    — Fortune, 8 Sep. 2019
  • Each slab operates like a sedimentary layer of personal grief, a vestige of vast killing fields.
    — Jerry Saltz, Vulture, 10 Oct. 2025
  • But some also expected to see sedimentary rock representing the bottom of a lake that called the crater home.
    — Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 18 Sep. 2023

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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