Brucite Marble
Collection:
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Object

Fact sheet

Brucite Marble

This sample of marble formed by contact metamorphism of limestone by the Paleocene age Beinn An Dubhaich Granite (Skye Eastern Red Hills Centre) on the Isle of Skye. The original sedimentary limestone was part of the Durness Limestone group, which was originally deposited in the Cambrian period.

The thin section is dominated by dusty Mg-rich carbonate grains with many deformation bands. There are also many circular bundles of white brucite crystals which appear as single zoned grains but between crossed polars they are revealed to be many brucite fibres in each grain. High relief pink coloured garnet is evident in the upper left area of the section, and is isotropic between crossed polars. Large areas of pale olivine are strongly cracked and appear to be broken into many small sub-grains showing bright second order birefringence colours which can be distigushed from the higher order orange and green of the carbonate.

Map
57.20668, -5.9507
Description:
Above the Old Manse, Loch Kilchrist, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Precision:
Moderate
About this collection

The United Kingdom Virtual Microscope (UKVM) collection consists of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks from around the UK.

It is intended as a teaching resource, helping to tell the story of the common rock types and how they form, and reflecting the history of the UK at the margins of the continent of Europe. The collection is a series of teaching sets, for example igneous rocks from the North Atlantic Igneous Province and SW England; high-temperature metamorphic rocks from Scotland and low-temperature metamorphic rocks from Wales; and sedimentary rocks, including English limestones and sandstones.

Sample details

Type
metamorphic
Category
marble
Rock-forming mineral
calcite
brucite
garnet
forsterite
Category guide  
Category Guide
Title
Refers to any word or phrase that appears in the individual rock names. Names are generally descriptive; they allow users to search for broad terms like ‘granite’ as well as more specific names such as ‘breccia’. However, the adjacent descriptions of the specimens captures a wider range of general words and phrases and is a more powerful search tool.
Description
Refers to any word or phrase that appears anywhere in the descriptions of the specimens
Accessory minerals
Minerals that occur in very low abundance in a rock. They are usually not visible with the naked eye and contribute perhapssver, they often dominate the rare elements such as platinum group metals.
Rock-forming minerals
Minerals that make up the bulk of all rock samples and are also the ones used in rock classi?cation.
Timescale
Selecting one or more period, for example 'Jurassic'.
Theme
A term used to group together related samples that are not already gathered into a single Collection. For instance, there is a ‘SW England granites’ theme that includes such rock types as granite, hydrothermal breccia, skarn and vein samples.
Category
A general term used to label a rock sample. It is a useful way of grouping similar samples throughout a collection. Category names are often, but not exclusively, common rock names (e.g. granite, basalt, dolerite, gabbro, greisen, skarn, gneiss, amphibolite, limestone, sandstone).
Owner
The owner of the sample that appears in the collection. For example, NASA owns all the samples that appear in the Moon Rocks collection
We would like to thank the following for the use of this sample: