Abstract: The asymmetrical current ripple marks occur over a wide range of scales in the Meso-zoic and Cenozoic continental fluvial and lacustrine sedimentary environments in China. They may exhibit diverse morphologies:very wide or very narrow,indicating a permanent shallow-water environment or an ephemeral overbank environment.The results of re-search in this paper have disclosed that within the ancient stratigraphic sections,there are many subaerial and subaqueous sedimentary cyclic sequences,each of which show sharp contacts with the underlying strata.The subaerial environments abound in asymmetrical current ripple marks,whereas the subaqueous ones in desiccation cracks.This implies that the current ripple marks resulted from the flood event deposition.These flood events of varying sizes may have important geological implications.