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Very fine crystalline or glassy rock of volcanic origin, composed chiefly of sodic plagioclase and free silica with subordinate dark-colored minerals.



a magmatic rock that is the effusive equivalent of granodiorite and quartz-diorite. Dacite consists of a finegrained or vitreous basic mass and phenocrysts of plagioclase and quartz, more rarely, of hornblende, biotite, and pyroxene, and sometimes, sanidine. Where albitization processes are widely developed, dacite turns into quartz al-bitophyre. Dacites were ejected by volcanoes in the Paleozoic (in the Urals, for example), Mesozoic, and Cenozoic (in the Caucasus, for example). They are also found among modern lavas on Kamchatka.

References in periodicals archive ?
The volcanic complex comprises dacites, andesites, fragmental basalts and a large epiclastic breccia dipping south on the edge of a 2 kilometre diameter circular depression identified in the SAR.