Palisades Sill (New Mexico)

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Description of Palisades Sill south of Cimarron, New Mexico Palisades Sill sign near Cimarron, NM Picture 2023.jpg
Description of Palisades Sill south of Cimarron, New Mexico
Cliffs of Palisades Sill Palisades Sill in NM Picture 2021.jpg
Cliffs of Palisades Sill
Palisades Sill of the Cimarron River Canyon Palisades sill, NM.jpg
Palisades Sill of the Cimarron River Canyon

The Palisades Sill is a fine-grained porphyritic dacite sill which forms spectacular cliffs and palisades in the Cimarron River canyon between Eagle Nest and Cimarron in northern New Mexico. It can be seen in the eastern part of Cimarron Canyon State Park. [1]

Porphyritic

Porphyritic is an adjective used in geology, specifically for igneous rocks, for a rock that has a distinct difference in the size of the crystals, with at least one group of crystals obviously larger than another group. Porphyritic rocks may be aphanites or extrusive rock, with large crystals or phenocrysts floating in a fine-grained groundmass of non-visible crystals, as in a porphyritic basalt, or phanerites or intrusive rock, with individual crystals of the groundmass easily distinguished with the eye, but one group of crystals clearly much bigger than the rest, as in a porphyritic granite. Most types of igneous rocks may display some degree of porphyritic texture. One main type of rock that has a porphyritic texture are porphyry, though not all porphyritic rocks are porphyries.

Dacite Volcanic rock intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite

Dacite is an igneous, volcanic rock. It has an aphanitic to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. The word dacite comes from Dacia, a province of the Roman Empire which lay between the Danube River and Carpathian Mountains where the rock was first described.

Sill (geology) geology term for a type of rock formation

In geology, a sill is a tabular sheet intrusion that has intruded between older layers of sedimentary rock, beds of volcanic lava or tuff, or along the direction of foliation in metamorphic rock. A sill is a concordant intrusive sheet, meaning that a sill does not cut across preexisting rock beds. Stacking of sills builds a sill complex and a large magma chamber at high magma flux. In contrast, a dike is a discordant intrusive sheet, which does cut across older rocks. Sills are fed by dikes, except in unusual locations where they form in nearly vertical beds attached directly to a magma source. The rocks must be brittle and fracture to create the planes along which the magma intrudes the parent rock bodies, whether this occurs along preexisting planes between sedimentary or volcanic beds or weakened planes related to foliation in metamorphic rock. These planes or weakened areas allow the intrusion of a thin sheet-like body of magma paralleling the existing bedding planes, concordant fracture zone, or foliations.

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References

  1. "NMBGMR Geologic Tour: Cimarron Canyon State Park". New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. Retrieved 2009-03-29.

Coordinates: 36°32′12″N105°10′30″W / 36.53667°N 105.17500°W / 36.53667; -105.17500

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.