Lynn Volcanic Complex

Last updated

The Lynn Volcanic Complex is a suite of Proterozoic felsic volcanic rocks, situated in a block north of the Boston Basin. It includes rhyolite, rhyodacite, welded ash flows, tuff and some andesite and basalt (although some of these may actually be part of the Middlesex Fells Volcanic Complex). Unlike the neighboring Mattapan Volcanic Complex, the Lynn complex lacks volcanic breccia and has a greater variety of texture and composition in its rhyolitic rocks.

It lies unconformably on top of the Dedham Granite. A mass of Dedham Granite at Pine Hill in Medford, Massachusetts contains inclusions of the Lynn complex. [1]

Related Research Articles

In geology, felsic is an adjective describing igneous rocks that are relatively rich in elements that form feldspar and quartz. It is contrasted with mafic rocks, which are relatively richer in magnesium and iron. Felsic refers to silicate minerals, magma, and rocks which are enriched in the lighter elements such as silicon, oxygen, aluminium, sodium, and potassium. Felsic magma or lava is higher in viscosity than mafic magma/lava.

St. Francois Mountains Mountain range in Missouri, United States

The St. Francois Mountains in southeast Missouri are a mountain range of Precambrian igneous mountains rising over the Ozark Plateau. This range is one of the oldest exposures of igneous rock in North America. The name of the range is spelled out as Saint Francois Mountains in official GNIS sources, but it is sometimes misspelled in use as St. Francis Mountains to match the anglicized pronunciation of both the range and St. Francois County.

Tweed Volcano Volcano in New South Wales, Australia

Tweed Volcano is a partially eroded Early Miocene shield volcano located in northeastern New South Wales, which formed when this region of Australia passed over the East Australia hotspot around 23 million years ago. Mount Warning, Lamington Plateau and the Border Ranges between New South Wales and Queensland are among the remnants of this volcano that was originally over 100 kilometres (62 mi) in diameter and nearly twice the height of Mount Warning today, at 1,156 metres (3,793 ft). Despite its size, Tweed Volcano was not a supervolcano; other shield volcanoes—such as in the Hawaiian Islands—are much larger. In the 23 million years since the volcano was active, erosion has been extensive, forming a large erosion caldera around the volcanic plug of Mount Warning. Its erosion caldera is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Musgrave Block

The Musgrave Block is an east-west trending belt of Proterozoic granulite-gneiss basement rocks approximately 500 kilometres (310 mi) long. The Musgrave Block extends from western South Australia into Western Australia.

Roxbury Conglomerate

The Roxbury Conglomerate, also informally known as Roxbury puddingstone, is a name for a rock formation that forms the bedrock underlying most of Roxbury, Massachusetts, now part of the city of Boston. The bedrock formation extends well beyond the limits of Roxbury, underlying part or all of Quincy, Canton, Milton, Dorchester, Dedham, Jamaica Plain, Brighton, Brookline, Newton, Needham, and Dover. It is named for exposures in Roxbury, Boston area.

Duluth Complex

The Duluth Complex, the related Beaver Bay Complex, and the associated North Shore Volcanic Group are rock formations which comprise much of the basement bedrock of the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Minnesota in central North America. The Duluth and Beaver Bay complexes are intrusive rocks formed about 1.1 billion years ago during the Midcontinent Rift; these adjoin and are interspersed with the extrusive rocks of the North Shore Volcanic Group produced during the same geologic event. These formations are part of the Superior Upland physiographic region of the United States, which is associated with the Laurentian Upland of the Canadian Shield, the core of the North American Craton.

The Bennett Lake Volcanic Complex (BLVC) is a huge 50-million-year-old extinct caldera complex that spans across the British Columbia-Yukon border in Canada. It is located near the western end of the West Arm of Bennett Lake. The caldera complex is surrounded by granitic rocks containing pendants.

Geology of Hong Kong

The geology of Hong Kong is dominated by igneous rocks formed during a major volcanic eruption period in the Mesozoic era. It made up 85% of Hong Kong's land surface and the remaining 15% are mostly sedimentary rocks located in the northeast New Territories. There are also a very small percentage of metamorphic rocks in New Territories. These are formed by deformation of pre-existing sedimentary rocks which changed its mineral assemblages (metamorphism).

Coast Range Arc

The Coast Range Arc was a large volcanic arc system, extending from northern Washington through British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle to southwestern Yukon. The Coast Range Arc lies along the western margin of the North American Plate in the Pacific Northwest of western North America. Although taking its name from the Coast Mountains, this term is a geologic grouping rather than a geographic one, and the Coast Range Arc extended south into the High Cascades of the Cascade Range, past the Fraser River which is the northward limit of the Cascade Range proper.

Igneous rock Rock formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava

Igneous rock, or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava.

Geology of Massachusetts

The geology of Massachusetts includes numerous units of volcanic, intrusive igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks formed within the last 1.2 billion years. The oldest formations are gneiss rocks in the Berkshires, which were metamorphosed from older rocks during the Proterozoic Grenville orogeny as the proto-North American continent Laurentia collided against proto-South America. Throughout the Paleozoic, overlapping the rapid diversification of multi-cellular life, a series of six island arcs collided with the Laurentian continental margin. Also termed continental terranes, these sections of continental rock typically formed offshore or onshore of the proto-African continent Gondwana and in many cases had experienced volcanic events and faulting before joining the Laurentian continent. These sequential collisions metamorphosed new rocks from sediments, created uplands and faults and resulted in widespread volcanic activity. Simultaneously, the collisions raised the Appalachian Mountains to the height of the current day Himalayas.

Vishnu Basement Rocks Lithostratigraphic unit in the Grand Canyon, Arizona

The Vishnu Basement Rocks is the name recommended for all Early Proterozoic crystalline rocks exposed in the Grand Canyon region. They form the crystalline basement rocks that underlie the Bass Limestone of the Unkar Group of the Grand Canyon Supergroup and the Tapeats Sandstone of the Tonto Group. These basement rocks have also been called either the Vishnu Complex or Vishnu Metamorphic Complex. These Early Proterozoic crystalline rocks consist of metamorphic rocks that are collectively known as the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite; sections of the Vishnu Basement Rocks contain Early Paleoproterozoic granite, granitic pegmatite, aplite, and granodiorite that have intruded these metamorphic rocks, and also, intrusive Early Paleoproterozoic ultramafic rocks.

Dedham Granite

Dedham Granite is a light grayish-pink to greenish-gray, equigranular to slightly porphyritic, variably altered, granite south and west of Boston, named for the town of Dedham, Massachusetts.

The geology of Cameroon is almost universally Precambrian metamorphic and igneous basement rock, formed in the Archean as part of the Congo Craton and the Central African Mobile Zone and covered in laterite, recent sediments and soils. Some parts of the country have sequences of sedimentary rocks from the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic as well as volcanic rock produced by the 1600 kilometer Cameroon Volcanic Line, which includes the still-active Mount Cameroon. The country is notable for gold, diamonds and some onshore and offshore oil and gas.

The Norfolk Basin is synclinal basin, partially bounded by faults, running east-northeast between the Dedham Block and the Foxborough Block. It contains the folded and cleaved, but unmetamorphosed Wamsutta Formation and Pondville Conglomerate, which both formed in the Pennsylvanian, also known as the Late Carboniferous 323 to 298 million years ago.

The Mattapan Volcanic Complex is a suite of Proterozoic felsic volcanic rocks, situated at the edge of the Boston Basin into the Blue Hills and lying unconformably atop the Dedham Granite. The complex is overlain by the Roxbury Conglomerate. In terms of its petrology, the rock types and compositions in the Mattapan Volcanic Complex are very similar to the Lynn Volcanic Complex and include ancient rhyolite and rhyodacite flows, some of which have porphyry characteristics, welded ash flows, tuff, breccia, extrusion domes and breccia pipes.

The geology of Eswatini formed beginning 3.6 billion years ago, in the Archean Eon of the Precambrian. Eswatini is the only country entirely underlain by the Kaapvaal Craton, one of the oldest pieces of stable continental crust and the only craton regarded as "pristine" by geologists, other than the Yilgarn Craton in Australia. As such, the country has very ancient granite, gneiss and in some cases sedimentary rocks from the Archean into the Proterozoic, overlain by sedimentary rocks and igneous rocks formed during the last 541 million years of the Phanerozoic as part of the Karoo Supergroup. Intensive weathering has created thick zones of saprolite and heavily weathered soils.

Geology of North Macedonia

The geology of North Macedonia includes the study of rocks dating to the Precambrian and a wide array of volcanic, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks formed in the last 541 million years.

Geology of the Isle of Mull

The geology of the Isle of Mull in Scotland is dominated by the development during the early Palaeogene period of a ‘volcanic central complex’ associated with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. The bedrock of the larger part of the island is formed by basalt lava flows ascribed to the Mull Lava Group erupted onto a succession of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks during the Palaeocene epoch. Precambrian and Palaeozoic rocks occur at the island's margins. A number of distinct deposits and features such as raised beaches were formed during the Quaternary period.

References

  1. Goldsmith, Richard (1991). Stratigraphy of the Milford-Dedham Zone, Eastern Massachusetts: An Avalonian Terrane. USGS. p. E24-E25.