A type of rock composed of angular, broken fragments of other rocks cemented together, formed by natural processes like earthquakes, landslides, or erosion.
From Italian 'breccia', from Frankish 'brechan' meaning 'to break' (related to English 'break'). The term entered geological vocabulary in the 18th-19th centuries as rock science developed.
Moon rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts were often breccia—lunar meteorite impacts create such violent crushing that geologists can date cosmic collisions by analyzing the welded fragments.
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