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This field trip explores igneous layering in the Morgantown Sheet, southeastern Pennsylvania, a Jurassic diabase intrusion that is part of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, formed during rifting of Pangea. The Pennsylvania Granite Quarry (Stop 1) is a dimension stone quarry in the southern side of the sheet, in which the cut walls display intermittent modal layering crosscut by channels of mafic diabase. Plagioclase-rich layers overlie pyroxene-rich layers in packages with slightly concave-up “wok” shapes ~ 0.3–0.4 m in dimension and ~ 0.35–0.5 m thick. Mafic diabase — both layers and crosscutting channels—contain 15–25 modal percent orthopyroxene phenocrysts and are interpreted as basaltic magma replenishments. Orientations of layering and channels suggest this part of the sheet was originally a horizontal sill ~ 400 m thick, at about six kilometers depth, and that the sheet was tilted 20° – 25° to the north after crystallization. The Dyer aggregate quarry (Stop 2) is in the northeast side of the sheet that dips ~ 80° southeast (Birdsboro dike). Here, rhythmic plagioclase-pyroxene layering also dipping ~ 80° is found in the interior and near the margin of the ~ 255-m-wide dike. Augite and plagioclase compositions are very similar in samples from different vertical heights in the sheet, suggesting localized rather than sheet-wide fractionation. We compare the Morgantown Sheet layering to similar features in the Palisades sill, New Jersey, and Basement sill, Antarctica, and discuss models for their formation.

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