 Cross-beds are layers of sediment that are inclined relative to the base and top of the bed they are associated with.Cross-beds can tell modern geologists many things about ancient environments such as- depositional environment, the direction of sediment transport (paleocurrent) and even environmental conditions at the time of deposition.Typically, units in the rock record are referred to as beds, while the constituent layers that make up the bed are referred to as laminae, when they are less than 1 cm thick and strata when they are greater than 1 cm in thickness.