This is one of the dykes found near Ayer's Cliff, just SE of Magog, Quebec. It's a set of three dykes, one of which has the deep-derived xenoliths. That one dyke (not photogenic) has weathered much faster, perhaps due to a higher carbonate content.
#kyanite #MinCup25 #Quebec #Xenolith #Grenville #Appalachians
#ThinSectionThursday A complex bit of Earth's mantle brought to the surface by a kimberlite (strictly, an orangeite) from Finsch mine, South Africa. The stand-out clear (black) grain is pyrope garnet. Most of the clear (bright coloured) grains are olivine. The pale brown (rainbow) rim around the pyrope is phlogopite mica, formed by a process called metasomatism. These rocks contain diamonds, but none visible here! See ALT text for more info... #Geology #Mantle #Xenolith #Diamond #Microscopy

A mantle xenolith (dunite) infiltrated by mafic melt on the left side. The melt has crystallized clinopyroxene, as shown by this electron backscattered diffraction image. Each pixel's data is a diffraction pattern that can determine mineral type and crystallographic orientation.

#ThinSectionThursday #Mineralogy #EBSD #Xenolith #Mantle

Wednesday, early afternoon posters at #AGU23
MR31B-0084 Effects of melt-rock interactions on deformation fabrics and rock physical properties in the shallow mantle lithosphere
James Kirkpatrick presenting, but this is the the M.Sc. work of Arvid Gonzalez (now core-logging in n. QC). Other authors are myself and Caroline Seyler (U. Minnesota).

Arvid found that infiltrating mafic melt reduces the preserved strain in mantle olivine.
#McGillUniversity #Mantle #EBSD #Xenolith #Lithosphere #Olivine

@Thorium @jolyon #xenolith top name for workstation 👍😊
A piece of the mantle: a spinel lherzolite xenolith from the Canadian Cordillera. Clear olivine, brown orthopyroxene, bright green chromian clinopyroxene and opaque (black) spinel. Plane polarized light, it's a bit thicker than standard. The mantle is beautiful. #thinSectionThursday #xenolith #mantle #geology
Things I’ve seen the last few days #maine #geology #granite #whale #Acadia #mush #xenolith
Rock on the beach at Barnum Point, Camano Island, WA. Looks like a granodiorite peppered with xenoliths. Igneous petrologists chime in. Likely weathered out of the till that caps the bluffs or a dropstone from floating ice on marine water incursion during the Everson interstade. Source rock provenance not known. Ref. Geologic map of the Juniper Beach 7.5-minute quadrangle, WDGER Geologic Map GM70. #geology #igneous #xenolith #iceage #glaciation #intrusive #PNW #washingtonstate #CamanoIsland

X is for Xenolith (and Xenocryst)

“A xenolith ("foreign rock") is a rock fragment (country rock) that becomes enveloped in a larger rock during the latter's development and solidification. In geology, the term xenolith is almost exclusively used to describe inclusions in igneous rock entrained during magma ascent, emplacement and eruption. Xenoliths may be engulfed along the margins of a magma chamber, torn loose from the walls of an erupting lava conduit or explosive diatreme or picked up along the base of a flowing body of lava on the Earth's surface. A xenocryst is an individual foreign crystal included within an igneous body. Examples of xenocrysts are quartz crystals in a silica-deficient lava and diamonds within kimberlite diatremes.”
~ From Wikipedia

See more: https://blogs.agu.org/georneys/2011/05/18/geology-word-of-the-week-x-is-for-xenolith/

#Xenolith #Xenocryst #geology #Science

Geology Word of the Week: X is for Xenolith

Mafic xenolith, Ontario, Canada, 2002. Photo Credit: Ron Schott. Note: Sorry for the re-post. This post was lost and then mangled somewhat in the blogger mishap last week. I managed to correct the post, but I had to re-post it under a new day and time.    def. Xenolith:A foreign rock inclusion, usually in an igeneous rock. Xenolith literally means “foreign rock” coming from “xenos” (foreign) and “lithos” (stone) in Ancient …

Georneys
Santa has arrived in my house, and with a distinctly apt #CriticalMinerals theme this year I might add! Thank you to my #secretsanta (not on birdapp) for thoroughly spoiling me... I received some #crocoite from Zeehan in Tassie, a wee mantle #xenolith from Mount Elephant in Victoria, and these amazing fragments from the #CampoDelCielo meteorite!!! 🥰
Thank you to the @SS_RockExchange for organising the best Secret Santa around for another year!