Abstract
AFTER finding in Turkey that many geosynclinal serpentines appear to be submarine lava flows1, we re-examined in Ayrshire the only known exposure of an actual contact between the Ballantrae serpentine and associated spilites. The evidence is difficult to disentangle, but it proved beyond doubt that the serpentine is earner than the particular spilite concerned2, not vice versa as had previously been supposed. Full publication has been delayed. Here we only wish to emphasize that the spilite, though the later of the two rocks, is strikingly altered for a distance of some few inches in from the contact, and that it is penetrated by some minute veins of pentinous material, some of which also clearly cut the serpentine itself. Away from the contact the spilite is an olive-green rock, dappled with very pale grey, or whitish, felspars. In its altered border-zone, which has an almost abrupt boundary, it turns reddish, sometimes purplish, with areas that are much paler; and its felspars are completely pseudomorphed by dark green translucent material that appears darker, instead of paler, than the matrix.
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Vuagnat, M., and Jaffé, F., Arch. Sci. Phys. et Nat., Genève, 7, 5 (1954).
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BAILEY, E., McCALLIEN, W. External Metasomatism associated with Serpentine. Nature 174, 836 (1954). https://doi.org/10.1038/174836b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/174836b0
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