2007
NO5201 : Pyroclastic breccia
taken 17 years ago, near to St Monans, Fife, Scotland
Pyroclastic breccia
Three very knowledgeable people kindly gave their expert thoughts on what this is. All three said it was a pyroclastic breccia.
The following is my abridged version of their emails and any errors are mine alone.
Basically what you have here is a pyroclastic breccia consisting of angular blocks of sedimentary rock and maybe even some ragged to blobby bombs of pale basalt.
The bluey grey tuffaceous matrix is probably mostly finely comminuted sediment, the local country rock is largely limestones and mudstones but maybe this has some bluish chlorite, some carbonaceous material perhaps or just a blue cast to the photograph.
Thanks to ...
Professor Barry Dawson
Professor Brian Upton
Dr David Stephenson
and special thanks to Anne Burgess for making the contacts.
Image classification
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