Deposits of particulate gravity currents in the rock record

The impetus for this Special Issue was provided by a conference on Particulate Gravity Currents, held in Aberdeen in September 2022. However, the collection published here consists of papers drawn from a wider community. The theme of this Special Issue is specifically the deposits of particulate gravity currents, but the 10 papers in the collection nonetheless cover a broad spectrum, including process, architecture, facies and texture, and will surely have appeal to researchers outside the deepwater community. Al-Mufti & Arnott (2024) and Cornard et al. (2024) both deal with textures and their origin. The first looks at planar lamination in ancient fine-grained sediments from a process perspective, and the second presents a detailed investigation of sandstone textures using a broad suite of analytical techniques. Jobe et al. (2025) examine the lateral variation in basin-plain turbidites at outcrop with a detailed study of texture, structure and thickness, noting extensive variation even in a system renowned for long-distance bed correlation. Covault et al. (2024) use an exceptional 3D seismic dataset to describe the evolution of a meandering channel system, and the radical changes to it induced by submarine landsliding. Kneller and Valdez Buso (2025) also deal with meandering channels and their evolution, from both outcrop and process perspectives, relating them to flow structure determined by flow criticality. The theme of flow criticality is also central to Englert et al.'s (2024) outcrop-based description of how behaviour of strongly stratified flows is influenced by small-scale topography. Gastineau et al. (2024) present a detailed description of a variety Holocene intra-lacustrine high-density event deposits triggered by major local seismicity, which they differentiate from hyperpycnite within the same lake. Mass transport is dealt with in papers by Li et al. (2025) and Valdez Buso et al. (2024), the former on mixed carbonate clastic megabeds within a dominantly clastic turbidite sequence at outcrop, and the latter on the incorporation of substrate blocks into mass movements as seen both in seismic and at outcrop. Nakajima & Saito (2024) present a comparison of ancient and modern gravelly cyclic steps, based on outcrop of the Miocene Tenguyama Formation and repeat bathymetric surveys of the Kurobe River fan delta front, suggesting a wider range of cyclic step-related facies than hitherto recognised. They also suggest that surge-type flows and hyperpycnal flows may play different roles in development of cycilc steps. The collection also includes a major process-based re-evaluation by Zavala et al. (2024) of models for delta sedimentation, based on the relative density of the fluvial outflow (determined mainly by suspended sediment concentration) and that of the receiving basin (determined largely by concentration of salt). Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.