Breccia
Written by Boss Tambang Tuesday, 01 December 2009 23:10
Breccia (”BRET-cha”) is a rock made of smaller rocks that are cemented together. It is like conglomerate that way. The difference between the two rock types is that breccia is made of sharp, broken clasts while conglomerate is made of smooth, eroded clasts. This is a brecciated mudstone from a northern California beach. It started as a simple rock, but some time after it consolidated, something—probably motion along a fault—shattered it and cemented it together again. The matrix between the clasts appears to be the same substance as the clasts, although there are also a few small veins of silica from the process of brecciation.
There are many different ways to make breccia, and usually geologists add a word to signify the kind of breccia they’re talking about. A sedimentary breccia arises from things like talus or landslide debris. A volcanic or igneous breccia forms during eruptive activities. A collapse breccia forms when rocks are partly dissolved, such as limestone or marble. The stone shown here is a fault breccia. And a new member of the family, first described from the Moon, is impact breccia
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