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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 ...
"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.
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. [2]
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 ...
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 .
These dark porphyritic basalts are separated from the Mesozoic formations below it by basal conglomerates. The basalts hold phenocrysts that developed before the magma reached the earth surface. These basalts are weathered, partially eroded and have a sub-horizontal stratification, particularly at the lower part.
Examples of this type of dacite outcrop are found in northwestern Montana and northeastern Bulgaria. Nevertheless, because of the moderately high silica content, dacitic magma is quite viscous [9] and therefore prone to explosive eruption. A notorious example of this is Mount St. Helens in which dacite domes formed from previous eruptions.
Rhomb porphyries are an unusual variety with gray-white porphyritic rhomb shaped phenocrysts embedded in a very fine grained red-brown matrix. The composition of rhomb porphyry places it in the trachyte - latite classification of the QAPF diagram. Latite is found, for example, as lavas in Bulgaria [3] and as intrusive laccoliths and sills in ...