Mount Pleasant Caldera rock. The Intercaldera Sequence comprises formations that crop out from overlying flows in triangularly shaped area, and includes thick volcanic ash (tuff), thick breccia layers, and intermediate to felsic igneous rocks that tend to intrude the above layers and are typically located along caldera margin faults. The Exocaldera Sequence contains ash flow tuffs, mafic lavas, alluvial redbeds, and porphyritic felsic lavas that are distributed across five different layers. The late Caldera-Fill Sequence contains rocks that are similar to those of the outflows of the other, older layers, and comprises two formations and two relatively minor intrusive lava flows. The volcanic
Craton craton. Earth's surface was probably broken up into many small plates with volcanic islands and arcs in great abundance. Small protocontinents (cratons) formed as crustal rock was melted and remelted by hot spots and recycled in subduction zones. There were no large continents in the early Archean, and small protocontinents were probably the norm in the Mesoarchean because they were prevented from coalescing into larger units by the high rate of geologic activity. These felsic protocontinents (cratons) probably formed at hot spots from a variety of sources: mafic magma melting more felsic rocks, partial melting of mafic rock, and from