the bedrock
rhyolite
granite that erupted · red and flow-banded


The tell
Fine-grained and light colored, usually pink, red or tan, too fine to pick out crystals, and it scratches glass. Some pieces carry big blocky feldspars floating in that fine background and plenty carry none at all. Granite is crystalline everywhere you look; rhyolite's background is smooth.
Color is doing most of the work here. Separating rhyolite from dacite or trachyte by eye is not something anyone can honestly do on a beach.
Same chemistry as granite, cooled fast instead of slow. It is what granite would have been if it had reached the surface.
What it gets mistaken for
- granite
- red jasper
- porphyry
- felsite
The facts
- also calledgranite that erupted · crystals in a fine paste
- age~1.1 billion yrs
- where it turns upevery shore · glacial float
- the field markgranite's colors, crystals afloat in a fine paste
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