Marble S Protolith

Most marble is made into either crushed stone or dimension stone.

Marble s protolith.

Marble is a metamorphic rock with limestone as protolith and that means that there was a large amount of pressure and high temperature as well but with marble it s mostly pressure on the. Gray slate is common but the rock occurs in a variety of colors including brown purple green and blue. These minerals can give marble a pink brown gray green or variegated coloration. In its pure form marble is a white stone with a crystalline and sugary appearance consisting of calcium carbonate caco 3.

Marble is commonly used for sculpture and as a building material. Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals most commonly calcite or dolomite marble is typically not foliated although there are exceptions in geology the term marble refers to metamorphosed limestone but its use in stonemasonry more broadly encompasses unmetamorphosed limestone. It is a fine grained metamorphic rock formed by compression of sedimentary shale mudstone or basalt. The protolith of marble was limestone or dolomite.

This rock sample is not marble it is quartzite metamorphosed sandstone. Marble occurs in large deposits that can be hundreds of feet thick and geographically extensive. Marble may be snow white either if the protolith was very pure or if the rock has been bleached by a water rich fluid. Usually marble contains other minerals including quartz graphite pyrite and iron oxides.

This allows it to be economically mined on a large scale with some mines and quarries producing millions of tons per year.