the.com/sediment bed
a graveyard so patient it keeps perfect records of every catastrophe that fell on it
means A layer of particles—mud, sand, silt, organic debris—that has settled and accumulated at the bottom of a body of water or other low-lying place.
from "Sediment" comes from Latin *sedimentum*, "a settling," from *sedere*, "to sit"—the same root that gives us "sit," "sedentary," and "reside." Sediment is, quite literally, matter that has sat down. "Bed" is the old Germanic word for a place to lie, stretched by geologists to mean any flat resting layer—a usage that turns the riverbed and the sediment bed alike into places where things come to rest.
- time capsule
- single layers can preserve a single day's storm
- oil cradle
- buried organic muck becomes petroleum over millions of years
- compaction trick
- squeezes water out as it turns to solid rock
- fossil vault
- most fossils survive only by quick burial in sediment
- global archive
- meteorite layers mark mass extinctions worldwide
mississippi river delta — deposits 210 million tons of sediment annually into the gulf of mexico
ganges brahmaputra delta — world's largest sediment delta, discharges 1 billion tons per year across bangladesh
amazon river mouth — deposits 1.2 billion tons of sediment yearly into the atlantic ocean