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In Brief

Conglomorate

image of conglomorate

Image courtesy of Daniel A. Vellone, Northeast Regional Geologist, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

A conglomerate is sedimentary rock made of rounded rock fragments of various types in a finer-grained matrix. To call a rock a conglomerate, some of the constituent pebbles must be at least 2 mm (about 1/13th of an inch) across.