About Igneous Rocks By?Andrew Alden
How to Tell Igneous Rocks: The main thing about igneous rocks is that they were once hot enough to melt. The following traits are all related to that.
* Because their mineral grains grew together tightly as the melt cooled, they are relatively strong rocks.
* They're made of primary minerals that are mostly black, white or gray. Any other colors they may have are pale.
* Their textures generally look like something that was baked in an oven. The even texture of coarse-grained granite is familiar from building stones or kitchen counters. Fine-grained lava may look like black bread (including gas bubbles) or dark peanut brittle (including larger crystals).
Origin of Igneous Rocks: The word "igneous" comes from the Latin for fire, and what igneous rocks have in common is that they formed by the cooling and crystallization of a melt. This material may have been?lava?erupted at the Earth's surface, or?magma?(unerupted lava) at depths of up to a few kilometers, or magma in deeper bodies (plutons1). Those three different settings create three main types of igneous rocks. Rock formed of lava is called?extrusive, rock from shallow magma is called?intrusive?and rock from deep magma is called?plutonic. The deeper the magma, the slower it cools and the larger the mineral crystals that form in it. Igneous rocks form in three main places: where the tectonic plates pull apart (at mid-ocean ridges), where plates come together (at subduction zones) and where continents are pushed together, making the Earth's crust thicker and allowing it to heat to melting. To learn more about how igneous rocks form, see?About Magma2?and?About Volcanism3. People commonly think of lava and magma as a liquid, like molten metal, but geologists find that magma is usually a mush?a partially melted fluid loaded with mineral crystals. As it cools, magma crystallizes into a series of minerals, some of which crystallize sooner than others. Not just that, but as the minerals crystallize, they leave the remaining magma with a changed chemical composition. Thus a body of magma evolves as it cools, and it also evolves as it moves through the crust, interacting with other rocks. Once magma erupts as lava, it freezes quickly and preserves a record of its history underground that geologists can decipher. Igneous petrology is a very complex field, and this article is only the barest outline.
Igneous Rock Textures: The three types of igneous rocks differ in their textures, starting with the size of the mineral grains. Extrusive rocks cool quickly (over periods of seconds to months) and have invisible or microscopic grains, or an?aphanitic texture4. Intrusive rocks cool more slowly (over thousands of years) and have visible grains of small to medium size, or?phaneritic texture5.?Plutonic rocks6?cool over millions of years and can have grains as large as pebbles?even meters across. Because they solidified from a fluid state, igneous rocks tend to have a uniform fabric without layers, and the mineral grains are packed together tightly. Think of the texture of something you would bake in the oven. However, in many igneous rocks large mineral crystals "float" in a fine-grained groundmass. The large grains are called?phenocrysts, and a rock with phenocrysts is called a?porphyry7; that is, it has a?porphyritic texture8. Phenocrysts are minerals that solidified earlier than the rest of the rock, and they are important clues to the rock's history. Some extrusive rocks have distinctive textures.?Obsidian9, formed when lava hardens quickly, has a?glassy texture10.?Pumice11?and?scoria12?are volcanic froth, puffed up by millions of gas bubbles giving them a?vesicular texture13.?Tuff14?is a rock made entirely of volcanic ash, fallen from the air or avalanched down a volcano's sides. It has a?pyroclastic texture15. And?pillow lava16?is a lumpy formation created by extruding lava underwater.
Igneous Rock Types: Basalt, Granite and More: Igneous rocks are classified by the minerals they contain. The main minerals in igneous rocks are hard, primary ones:?feldspar17,?quartz18,amphiboles19?and?pyroxenes20?(together called "dark minerals" by geologists), and?olivine21?along with the softer mineral?mica22.
The two best-known igneous rock types are?basalt?and?granite, which have distinctly different compositions and textures.?Basalt23?is the dark, fine-grained stuff of many lava flows and magma intrusions. Its dark minerals are rich in magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe), hence basalt is called a?mafic?rock. So basalt is mafic and either extrusive or intrusive.?Granite24?is the light, coarse-grained rock formed at depth and exposed after deep erosion. It is rich in feldspar and quartz (silica) and hence is called a?felsic?rock. So granite is felsic and plutonic.
Basalt and granite account for the great majority of igneous rocks. Ordinary people, even ordinary geologists, use the names freely. (Stone dealers call any plutonic rock at all "granite.") But igneous petrologists use many more names. They generally talk about?basaltic?and?granitic?or?granitoid25?rocks among themselves and out in the field, because it takes laboratory work to determine an exact rock type according to the official classifications. True granite and true basalt are narrow subsets of these categories. Get deeper into classification?in this article26. A few of the less common igneous rock types can be recognized by non-specialists. For instance a dark-colored plutonic mafic rock, the deep version of basalt, is called?gabbro27. A light-colored intrusive or extrusive felsic rock, the shallow version of granite, is called?felsite28?or?rhyolite29. And there is a suite of?ultramafic rocks30?with even more dark minerals and even less silica than basalt.?Peridotite31?is the foremost of those.
Where Igneous Rocks Are Found: The deep sea floor (the oceanic crust) is made almost entirely of basaltic rocks, with peridotite underneath in the mantle. Basalts are also erupted above the Earth's great subduction zones, either in volcanic island arcs or along the edges of continents. However, continental magmas tend to be less basaltic and more granitic (learn more about arc volcanism32). The continents are the exclusive home of granitic rocks. Nearly everywhere on the continents, no matter what rocks are on the surface, you can drill down and reach granitoid eventually. In general, granitic rocks are less dense than basaltic rocks, and thus the continents actually float higher than the oceanic crust on top of the ultramafic rocks of the Earth's mantle. The behavior and histories of granitic rock bodies are among geology's deepest and most intricate mysteries.