Volcanic Breccia; Buachaille Etive Beag.

Breccia is the name for a rock made of chunks of other rocks where the chunks are angular. They require high energy depositional environments and it is hard to get much higher energy than a volcanic caldera eruption! During caldera eruptions many cubic kilometers of magma can be expelled in just a few hours, resulting in collapse of the magma chamber and the volence of the eruption can rip pieces of rock form the magma chamber walls, eroding the conduit to erupt mixtures of super-hot ash and blocks previous eruptions and country rock all in a chaotic jumble. This is volcanic breccia. The largest eruptions which occur simultaneously with caldera collapse can produce breccias with very large blocks (metres or more across) - called megabreccias. The ones in the path here are more modest - a megabreccia block would be larger than the building stones of the pathe - but still, think of the energy required to break all that rock up and throw it hundreds of metres into the air!

[@mikelong9638]

Nice video Doc!

[@OneMinuteGeology]

👍👍👍