Over the past one and half centuries, sedimentology has been experiencing a hard development course from the beginning up to now. Comprehensively speaking, the development of sedimentology can be parted into seven phases: budding phase, initial formation phase, professional research phase, summary and enhancement phase, theoretic formation sublime phase, discipline crossing and integration phase. During the first phase (from 1830 to 1894), the Walther Law was the most important, which was not only used at that time, but also is being used now. During the second phase (from 1894 to 1931), sedimentology was formed into an independent branch of science. During the third phase (from 1931 to 1950), a lot of new conceptions and research methods were put forward and a series of books were published. During the fourth phase (from 1951 to 1970), the prominent advances were the patterns and interpretation of the formation and diagrammatization. During the fifth phase (from 1971 to 1980), sedimentological theory was summerized comprehensively. During the sixth phase (from 1981 to 1990), new theories and new viewpoints were put forward, which made this phase a flourish development stage. The seventh phase (from 1991 to now) is the discipline crossing and integration phase. The depth and extent of sedimentology were expanded by the new technologies and methods. The development of sedimentology in each phase showed that it could not only be affected by the enlightening of science and technology, but also has promoted the global industrial revolution and economic growth, especially in the aspect of each sediment ore deposit. With the progress of geological exploration and exploitation, many important ores were found in sediments, including oil and gas, coal, gold, uranium, diamond, potash, platinum, aluminum, manganese, gypsum, and gas hydrate. Sedimentology is one of the main basic branches of earth science and its highlights and fronts are moving to four topics: resource, environment, disaster, and global climate change. There are obvious laws on the seven aspects for the future progress of sedimentology: from being macroscopic to microscopic research scale; from being qualitative to quantitative research method; from theory to application on research purpose; from being static to dynamic research form; from being single to multiple research disciplines; using computer technology instead of manual; for research field, from regional to global consideration .