A type of igneous rock with a fine-grained texture that contains larger crystals (phenocrysts) of feldspar or quartz set in a finer-grained groundmass.
From 'grano-' (grain) + 'phyre' (Greek porphyra, purple, used to describe a particular rock texture pattern). Developed in the late 1800s to describe this mixed-crystal-size texture.
Granophyre looks like someone scattered different-sized pebbles in concrete—and geologically this tells a story of magma cooling in two stages: first the big crystals formed slowly, then the magma cooled quickly and the rest crystallized tiny, creating a textural timeline written in stone.
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