Abstract One of the principal tasks of the geologist is to determine the depositional environments in which rocks are deposited. Although regional environmental interpretations of transgressions and regressions, movements of shoreline, and gross aspects of continental and marine sedimentation have been understood since stratigraphy became an established branch of geology, only recently has the science of sedimentology come up with criteria for environmental recognition of specific outcrops, wells, or even hand samples. This observation is especially true of carbonate rocks. The papers in this volume will provide a key to the subject of recognition of depositional environments in carbonate rocks. Based on a symposium held in Los Angeles, California, on April 1967, at the joint meeting of AAPG and SEPM.