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"Imperial Porphyry" from the Red Sea Mountains of Egypt A waterworn cobble of porphyry Rhyolite porphyry from Colorado; scale bar in lower left is 1 cm (0.39 in). Porphyry (/ ˈ p ɔːr f ə r i / POR-fə-ree) is any of various granites or igneous rocks with coarse-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz dispersed in a fine-grained silicate-rich, generally aphanitic matrix or groundmass.
Porphyritic texture in a granite. This is an intrusive porphyritic rock. The white, square feldspar phenocrysts are much larger than crystals in the surrounding matrix; eastern Sierra Nevada, Rock Creek Canyon, California. A porphyritic volcanic sand grain, as seen under the petrographic microscope. The large grain in the middle is of a much ...
A large number of the finer quartz-porphyries are also in some degree silicified of impregnated by quartz, chalcedony and opal, derived from the silica set free by decomposition (kaolinization) of the original feldspar. This re-deposited silica forms veins and patches of indefinite shape or may bodily replace a considerable area of the rock by ...
Examples of phaneritic igneous rocks are gabbro, diorite, and granite. Porphyritic textures develop when conditions during the cooling of magma change relatively quickly. The earlier formed minerals will have formed slowly and remain as large crystals, whereas, sudden cooling causes the rapid crystallization of the remainder of the melt into a ...
Porphyritic rocks are often named using mineral name modifiers, normally in decreasing order of abundance. Thus when olivine forms the primary phenocrysts in a basalt, the name may be refined from basalt to porphyritic olivine basalt or olivine phyric basalt . [ 5 ]
Aphanites are commonly porphyritic, having large crystals embedded in the fine groundmass, or matrix. The larger inclusions are called phenocrysts . They consist essentially of very small crystals of minerals such as plagioclase feldspar , with hornblende or augite , and may contain also biotite , quartz , and orthoclase .
See: Porphyritic and Porphyry (geology). Subcategories. This category has the following 2 subcategories, out of 2 total. B. Basalt (3 C, 27 P) R. Rhyolite (1 C, 5 P)
Basanite (/ ˈ b æ s. ə ˌ n aɪ t /) is an igneous, volcanic rock with aphanitic to porphyritic texture. It is composed mostly of feldspathoids , pyroxenes , olivine , and calcic plagioclase and forms from magma low in silica and enriched in alkali metal oxides that solidifies rapidly close to the Earth's surface .