Diabase

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.