This sub-tutorial is not intended as a comprehensive guide to grain identification--for that you should spend some time with the outstanding atlas of Scholle & Ulmer (2003). Here we present a limited sampling of some common grain types, just to get you started.

    It is important to note that not every grain you see will look exactly as it does in this brief overview. You have to remember that thin-sections are mostly two-dimensional, and as a consequence, grains (particularly fossils) will look very different depending on the "slice" that is presented to you in a given section.