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Current ripples
Walking on water? Not really, but these ripples, now petrified, formed under shallow water and are exposed on the floor of a quarry at the Varvito Park, Ito, Brazil. They are part of exposures of Permian sandstone from the Itararé Group. The ripple crests are mostly linear and the profile of the ripple is asymmetric, allowing to reconstruct the direction of flow (towards the viewer).
Bedforms
Bedforms are morphological patterns that form at the interface of flowing fluid and a bed of moving sediment. Typical examples include dunes and ripples. Lateral migration of bedforms can generate sedimentary structures, like ripple cross-lamination or cross-stratification. Geology students often mix up the concept of bedform and sedimentary structure: ripples are bedforms (not sedimentary structures) and ripple cross-lamination is a sedimentary structure (not a bedform). Sometimes, like in this…