Littoral facies is a kind of transitional environment between marine and terrestrial deposition. Controlled by complex sedimentary dynamic mechanisms, frequency curves of grain- size distributions of littoral facies sediments are usually multimodal. The subpopulations of grain- size distributions are the recorders of original depositional information contained in littoral facies. In order to mine sedimentary significances from subpopulations in grain- size distributions of littoral facies sediments, ancient littoral sand body in the Donghetang Formation in the Hade Oilfield, Tarim Basin, was investigated in this paper.Methods: Skew normal probability density function is used to decompose 968 subpopulations from 156 grain- size distributions. These subpopulations are automatically classified by hierarchical clustering. Relevance, combination mode, depositional environment significances and transport way of subpopulations are discussed in Pearson correlation coefficient, microfacies and probability cumulative curves.Results: In this paper, the results show that all subpopulations can be classified into 8 types. With the increment of fine sandy dominant subpopulations’ percentages in grain- size distributions, medium sandy subpopulations’ proportions increase and fine- very fine sandy subpopulations’ proportions reduce. Medium sandy subpopulations’ proportions firstly increase and then decrease from bottom to top in bar sands. Proportions of fine- very fine sandy and silty subpopulations are markedly increased in beach sands. Proportions of clay subpopulations are over 6% in trough sands. From bar to beach and trough in shoreface seaward, peak frequencies of fine sandy dominant subpopulations decrease and sorting are worse, and silty and clay subpopulations increase gradually. Medium sandy particles were transported by swash, while fine and very fine sandy grains were transported by backwash mainly. Silty and clay grains deposited in graded and uniform suspension respectively.Conclusions: Depositional information mined from subpopulations of grain- size distributions offers references for researching sedimentary environments and evolutionary processes of modern and ancient littoral facies sediments.