L520 - Quartzite

Carboniferous

Location

Almost entirely made up of fine sand sized quartz grains. Does not fizz with acid, so no carbonate present. Clean white rock, apart from pink-brown weathering. Dark carbonaceous marks are plant roots.

Subangular quartz grains, typically 0.25 mm across with sutured contacts.

The sutured contacts between the quartz grains indicate that this rock has been metamorphosed to a quartzite. This is a very well recrystallised rock. The protolith was a fine-grained quartz arenite (<15% matrix), but we cannot tell how angular or spherical the original grains were as they have been partially dissolved by pressure solution to form sutured contacts.

quartzite