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When water is trapped in a muddy pool that slowly dries up, the slow
sedimentation of the clay particles forms a mud layer on the bottom of
the pool. As the last of the water evaporates, the moist clay begins to dry
up and crack, producing mud cracks as well as variably shaped mud
chips known as mud crack polygons. Interpreting the character of any of
the sedimentary structures discussed above (for example, ripples) would
primarily provide information concerning the nature of the medium of
transport. Mud cracks, preserved on the surface of a bed, give some idea
of the nature of the depositional environment, specifically that it
experienced alternating periods of wet and dry.
All clastic and organic sediments suffer one of two fates. Either they
accumulate in a depositional environment, then get buried and lithified
(turned to rock by compaction and cementation) to produce sedimentary
rock, or they are reexposed by erosion after burial, but
before lithification , and go through one or more new cycles of
weathering-erosion-transport-deposition-burial.