Psammite
General term for sandstone / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the type of sedimentary rock. For the work by Archimedes, see The Sand Reckoner.
Psammite (Greek: psammitēs "(made) from sand", from psammos "sand")[1] is a general term for sandstone. It is equivalent to the Latin-derived term arenite[2][3] and is commonly used in various publications to describe a metamorphosed sedimentary rock with a dominantly sandstone protolith.[4] In Europe, this term was formerly used for a fine-grained, fissile, clayey sandstone.[3] Pettijohn[5] gives the following descriptive terms based on grain size, avoiding the use of terms such as "clay" or "argillaceous", which carry an implication of chemical composition: