Country rock (geology) in geology when the term "country rock" is used include: When describing a pluton or dike, the igneous rock can be described as intruding the surrounding "country rock", the rock into which the pluton has intruded. When country rock is intruded by dyke, it is called "discordant intrusion," while intrusion by a sill indicates a "sub-parallel" or "concordant intrusion". Most intrusions into country rock are via magma. Usually, country rock is intruded by an igneous body of rock which formed when magma forced upward through fractures, or melted through overlying rock. Magma then cooled into solid rock, different from the
Tholeiitic magma series distinguished from rocks in the calc-alkaline magma series by the redox state of the magma they crystallized from (tholeiitic magmas are reduced; calc-alkaline magmas are oxidized ). When the parent magmas of basalts crystallize, they preferentially crystallize the more magnesium-rich and iron-poor forms of the silicate minerals olivine and pyroxene, causing the iron content of tholeiitic magmas to increase as the melt is depleted of iron-poor crystals. However, a calc-alkaline magma is oxidized enough to precipitate significant amounts of the iron oxide magnetite, causing the iron content of the magma to remain more steady as it cools than with a