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Tholeiite from the Cenozoic alkaline volcanic province of Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

J. B. Wright
Affiliation:
Dept of Earth Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Walton, Bletchley, Bucks., U.K.

Summary

Bouldery outcrops of coarse-grained olivine-free lava, containing abundant orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene, mostly in glomerophyric aggregates, occur over a small area among the Tertiary to Recent volcanics of the Jos Plateau, Nigeria. This is the only rock of tholeiitic affinity in an otherwise completely alkaline volcanic province. Petrographically it does not greatly resemble tholeiitic occurrences reported from such provinces elsewhere, but that is believed to be due more to a relatively complex crystallization history than to any fundamentally different process of magma generation. It is not regarded as representing a tholeiitic parent for the alkaline lavas of the Jos Plateau region.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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