Comendite is a hard,
peralkaline igneous rock, a type of light blue grey
rhyolite
Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...
.
Phenocrysts are sodic
sanidine with minor
albite
Albite is a plagioclase feldspar mineral. It is the sodium endmember of the plagioclase solid solution series. It represents a plagioclase with less than 10% anorthite content. The pure albite endmember has the formula . It is a tectosilica ...
and bipyramidal
quartz.
[ Iddings, Joseph Paxson, 1913, ''Igneous rocks: composition, texture and classification'', v. 2, pp. 94-96] Comendite occurs in the mountains Tibrogargan, Coonowrin, Tunbubudla, Coochin, Saddleback, Tibberoowuccum and Ngungun in the
Glass House Mountains, South East Queensland, Australia. The blue colour is caused by very small crystals of
riebeckite or
arfvedsonite. Comendite also occurs in
Sardinia,
Corsica
Corsica ( , Upper , Southern ; it, Corsica; ; french: Corse ; lij, Còrsega; sc, Còssiga) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast o ...
,
Ascension Island
Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory o ...
,
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the Er ...
,
Somalia and other areas of
East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa:
Due to the historical ...
.
[
The 1903 eruption of ]Changbaishan
Paektu Mountain (), also known as Baekdu Mountain and in China as Changbai Mountain ( zh, s=长白山, t=長白山; Manchu: Golmin Šanggiyan Alin), is an active stratovolcano on the Chinese–North Korean border. At , it is the highest mo ...
volcano in north-east China erupted comendite pumice.
Comendite derives its name from the area of Le Commende on San Pietro Island in Italy, where the rock type is found.[Cioni, R. and Funedda, A., (2005) ''Structural geology of crystal-rich, silicic lava flows: A case study from San Pietro Island (Sardinia, Italy)'' in Manga, M. and Ventura, G. (editors) (2005) ''Kinematics and Dynamics of Lava Flows'', Geological Society of America Special Paper 396, pages 1 to 14.]
References
Volcanic rocks
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