Two mica granite - Aberdeen
Collection:
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Object

Fact sheet

Two mica granite - Aberdeen

The sample comes from a suite of granites in NE Scotland that were intruded around 470 million years ago at depths of around 20 km. They were formed during the peak of metamorphism in the Grampian orogeny, which reached temperatures of 700 °C. There is strong evidence that the granites were formed by the melting of Dalradian metasediments, and they are surrounded by a high temperature, partially melted country-rock envelope.

Many of the civic buildings in the local city of Aberdeen were built from this granite, which comes from the Rubislaw quarry. The building stones commonly exhibit biotite-rich patches that represent the remains of a dominantly pelitic metasedimentary source.

In thin section the rock exhibits large plates of quartz, intergrown with altered plagioclase and microcline feldspar. The microcline exhibits characteristic cross-hatched twinning. The rock contains many small fox-brown biotite grains with zircon inclusions, each surrounded by a pleochroic halo. Muscovite is present both as small grains intergrown with biotite and as larger plates.

Additional images
  • granite - width 1.7cm
Map
57.139413, -2.148688
Description:
Rubislaw quarry, Aberdeen, Grampian Region, Scotland
Precision:
Good
About this collection

The United Kingdom Virtual Microscope (UKVM) collection consists of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks from around the UK.

It is intended as a teaching resource, helping to tell the story of the common rock types and how they form, and reflecting the history of the UK at the margins of the continent of Europe. The collection is a series of teaching sets, for example igneous rocks from the North Atlantic Igneous Province and SW England; high-temperature metamorphic rocks from Scotland and low-temperature metamorphic rocks from Wales; and sedimentary rocks, including English limestones and sandstones.

Sample details

Type
igneous
Category
granite
Rock-forming mineral
biotite
muscovite
mica
microcline
plagioclase
feldspar
quartz
Category guide  
Category Guide
Title
Refers to any word or phrase that appears in the individual rock names. Names are generally descriptive; they allow users to search for broad terms like ‘granite’ as well as more specific names such as ‘breccia’. However, the adjacent descriptions of the specimens captures a wider range of general words and phrases and is a more powerful search tool.
Description
Refers to any word or phrase that appears anywhere in the descriptions of the specimens
Accessory minerals
Minerals that occur in very low abundance in a rock. They are usually not visible with the naked eye and contribute perhapssver, they often dominate the rare elements such as platinum group metals.
Rock-forming minerals
Minerals that make up the bulk of all rock samples and are also the ones used in rock classi?cation.
Timescale
Selecting one or more period, for example 'Jurassic'.
Theme
A term used to group together related samples that are not already gathered into a single Collection. For instance, there is a ‘SW England granites’ theme that includes such rock types as granite, hydrothermal breccia, skarn and vein samples.
Category
A general term used to label a rock sample. It is a useful way of grouping similar samples throughout a collection. Category names are often, but not exclusively, common rock names (e.g. granite, basalt, dolerite, gabbro, greisen, skarn, gneiss, amphibolite, limestone, sandstone).
Owner
The owner of the sample that appears in the collection. For example, NASA owns all the samples that appear in the Moon Rocks collection
We would like to thank the following for the use of this sample: