diabase, also called Dolerite,  fine- to medium-grained, dark gray to black intrusive igneous rock. It is extremely hard and tough and is commonly quarried for crushed stone, under the name of trap. Although not popular, it makes an excellent monumental stone and is one of the dark-coloured rocks commercially known as black granite. Diabase is widespread and occurs in dikes (tabular bodies inserted in fissures), sills (tabular bodies inserted while molten between other rocks), and other relatively small, shallow bodies. Chemically and mineralogically, diabase closely resembles the volcanic rock basalt, but it is somewhat coarser and contains glass. With increase in grain size, diabase may pass into gabbro.

About one-third to two-thirds of the rock is calcium-rich plagioclase feldspar; the remainder is mostly pyroxene or hornblende. In diabase, poorly formed pyroxene crystals wrap around or mold against long, rectangular plagioclase crystals to give it the characteristic texture known as diabasic or ophitic. The larger pyroxene grains may completely enclose plagioclase; but as the quantity of the latter increases, pyroxene appears more interstitial.

Certain flat tabular masses (thick sheets or sills) of diabase, such as that forming the Palisades along the Hudson River near New York City, show concentrations of heavy minerals (as olivine or pyroxene) in their lower portions. These concentrations are commonly believed to have developed by the settling of early formed crystals in molten diabase.

Diabase may show varying degrees of alteration: plagioclase is converted to sassurite; pyroxene to hornblende, actinolite, or chlorite; and olivine to serpentine and magnetite. In British usage, such altered rock is called diabase. Some diabase masses have been subdivided by systematic fractures into rectangular blocks. Subsequent alteration and weathering along these fractures have disintegrated and rounded off block corners and edges (spheroidal weathering), leaving regularly spaced, spherelike masses of fresh diabase enveloped by shells of progressively more altered and disintegrated material.

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Diabase

Diabase / ̍ d a ɪ . ə b e ɪ s / or dolerite is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. In North American usage, the term diabase refers to the fresh rock, whilst elsewhere the term dolerite is used for the fresh rock and diabase refers to altered material.[1][2] Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine grained to aphanitic chilled margins which may contain tachylite (dark mafic glass).

Contents

1 Petrography 2 Diabase/dolerite 3 Locations 4 Use 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Petrography

Diabase normally has a fine, but visible texture of euhedral lath-shaped plagioclase crystals (62%) set in a finer matrix of clinopyroxene, typically augite (20–29%), with minor olivine (3% up to 12% in olivine diabase), magnetite (2%), and ilmenite (2%).[3] Accessory and alteration minerals include hornblende, biotite, apatite, pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, serpentine, chlorite, and calcite. The texture is termed diabasic and is typical of diabases. This diabasic texture is also termed interstitial.[4] The feldspar is high in anorthite (as opposed to albite), the calcium endmember of the plagioclase anorthite-albite solid solution series, most commonly labradorite.

Diabase/dolerite

The Candlestick, Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, is composed of Jurassic Dolerite. Tasmania has the world's largest areas of dolerite.

In non-North American usage dolerite is preferred due to the various conflicting uses of diabase. Dolerite (Greek: doleros, meaning "deceptive") was the name given by Haüy in his 1822 Traité de minéralogie. In continental Europe diabase was reserved by Brongniart for pre-Tertiary (pre-Cenozoic) material,[5] with dolerite used for more recent rock. The use of diabase in this sense was abandoned in Britain in favor of dolerite for rocks of all ages by Allport (1874),[6] though some British geologists continued to use diabase to describe slightly altered dolerite, in which pyroxene has been altered to amphibole.[7]

Locations

A diabase dike crosscutting horizontal limestone beds in Arizona

Diabase is usually found in smaller relatively shallow intrusive bodies such as dikes and sills. Diabase dikes occur in regions of crustal extension and often occur in dike swarms of hundreds of individual dikes or sills radiating from a single volcanic center.

The Palisades Sill which makes up the New Jersey Palisades on the Hudson River, near New York City, is an example of a diabase sill. The dike complexes of the British Tertiary Volcanic Province which includes Skye, Rum, Mull, and Arran of western Scotland, the Slieve Gullion region of Ireland, and extends across northern England contains many examples of diabase dike swarms. Parts of the Deccan Traps of India, formed at the end of the Cretaceous also includes dolerite.[8] It is also abundant in large parts of Curaçao, an island off the coast of Venezuela.

In Western Australia a 200 km long dolerite dike, the Norseman–Wiluna Belt[9] is associated with the non-alluvial gold mining area between Norseman and Kalgoolie, which includes the largest gold mine in Australia,[10] the Super Pit gold mine. West of the Norseman–Wiluna Belt is the Yalgoo–Singleton Belt, where complex dolerite dike swarms obscure the volcaniclastic sediments.[11]

The vast areas of mafic volcanism/plutonism associated with the Jurassic breakup of Gondwanaland in the Southern Hemisphere include many large diabase/dolerite sills and dike swarms. These include the Karoo dolerites of South Africa, the Ferrar Dolerites of Antarctica, and the largest of these, indeed the most extensive of all dolerite formations worldwide, are found in Tasmania. Here, the volume of magma which intruded into a thin veneer of Permian and Triassic rocks from multiple feeder sites, over a period of perhaps a million years, may have exceeded 40,000 cubic kilometres.[12] In Tasmania alone dolerite dominates the landscape. Ring dikes are large, near vertical dikes showing above ground as circular outcrops up to 30 km in diameter, with a depth from hundreds of metres to several kilometres. Thicker dikes are made up of plutonic rocks, rather than hypabyssal and are centred around deep intrusions.

Use

Diabase is used as crushed stone and as ornamental stone.