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In geology, a dike or dyke is a sheet of rock that is formed in a fracture of a pre-existing rock body. Dikes can be either magmatic or sedimentary in origin. Magmatic dikes form when magma flows into a crack then solidifies as a sheet intrusion, either cutting across layers of rock or through a contiguous mass of rock.
Quarter for scale. A clastic dike is a seam of sedimentary material that fills an open fracture in and cuts across sedimentary rock strata or layering in other rock types. Clastic dikes form rapidly by fluidized injection (mobilization of pressurized pore fluids) or passively by water, wind, and gravity (sediment swept into open cracks).
A sheeted dyke complex, or sheeted dike complex, is a series of sub-parallel intrusions of igneous rock, forming a layer within the oceanic crust. [1] At mid-ocean ridges , dykes are formed when magma beneath areas of tectonic plate divergence travels through a fracture in the earlier formed oceanic crust, feeding the lavas above and cooling ...
The Pilanesberg Ring Dike Complex in South Africa. A ring dike or ring dyke is an intrusive igneous body that is circular, oval or arcuate in plan and has steep contacts. [1] While the widths of ring dikes differ, they can be up to several thousand meters. [2] The most commonly accepted method of ring dike formation is directly related to ...
Dike swarm. A dike swarm (American spelling) or dyke swarm (British spelling) is a large geological structure consisting of a major group of parallel, linear, or radially oriented magmatic dikes intruded within continental crust or central volcanoes in rift zones. Examples exist in Iceland [1] and near other large volcanoes, (stratovolcanoes ...
Diabase (/ ˈdaɪ.əˌbeɪs /), also called dolerite (/ ˈdɒl.əˌraɪt /) or microgabbro, [1] is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-grained to aphanitic chilled margins which may contain tachylite ...
The Great Dyke is a strategic economic resource with significant quantities of chrome and platinum. Chromite occurs to the base of the Ultramafic Sequence and is mined throughout the dyke. [4] Below the Ultramafic-Mafic sequences' contact, and in the uppermost pyroxenite (bronzitite and websterite) units are economic concentrations of nickel ...
The Mackenzie dike swarm is the largest dike swarm known on Earth, [1] more than 500 km (310 mi) wide and 3,000 km (1,900 mi) long, extending in a northwesterly direction across the whole of Canada from the Arctic to the Great Lakes. The mafic dikes cut Archean and Proterozoic rocks, including those in the Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan ...