English: Sandstone injectite with granite clasts in the Precambrian of Colorado, USA.

Seen here is an incredibly rare type of rock. This is a sandstone injectite dike in the Front Range of Colorado.

Dikes are planar igneous intrusions that cut across country rocks. (See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/albums/72157632467411234) Common lithologies in igneous dikes include granite and basalt/diabase. Some dikes are composed of sedimentary material - such clastic dikes form when material fills in fractures in other rocks. (See: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/albums/72157711855111128)

This dike is composed of lithified sand and some larger clasts. The surrounding rocks (not visible in the cut) are coarsely-crystalline granites of the Pikes Peak Granite. Angular pieces of non-sheared, wall rock granite (= orangish/pinkish-colored material in the photo) are in the dike. The dike fill is mostly quartz sand and some K-feldspar sand. Mudstone pebbles have been reported from some examples. The clastic dikes in this part of Colorado have been known since the 1890s - gold explorers examined them. For over 100 years, these sandstone dikes have been interpreted as injectites (forcefully injected sand intrusives) - they are some of the largest on Earth. Major and minor sandstone dikes occur, including examples over 100 meters wide. About 200 dikes have been mapped, plus questionable examples in Boulder County. The dikes are well-cemented and solid in places, while at other sites they are crumbly. Some compound injections are known, representing multiple injection events.

The origin of Colorado's sandstone injectite dikes has long been a mystery. The basic idea of overpressured, non-lithified, sandy material being forcefully injected downward into fractured granite is generally accepted, but the timing and the exact source of the material is traditionally undetermined and controversial. Many researchers concluded that the Cambrian-aged Sawatch Sandstone was the source of the sand, because it is the basal Phanerozoic unit atop this area's Precambrian crystalline basement rocks. Did the Sawatch get remobilized during the Laramide Orogeny (= late Mesozoic to early Cenozoic mountain-building event that formed the true Rocky Mountains)? That's a strange idea - it's implausible that a Cambrian sandstone would stay nonlithified for over one-third of a billion years. Some think that injection occurred during the Ancestral Rockies Uplift (Late Paleozoic), or the Sawatch got remobilized in the Early Paleozoic. Regardless of timing, how can a ~5 meter thick Sawatch Sandstone deposit be the source for 100 meter thick sandstone dikes? Maybe the Sawatch was originally thicker, but is now mostly eroded away. Another interpretation is that these are thin and thick fault slices. That idea is refuted by noting that grains are aligned with dike walls.

Detrital zircon analysis of sandstone injectite dikes in central Colorado has shown that the original source of sandy material is a long eroded-away, late Precambrian-aged unit that's been designated the Tava Sandstone.

The example seen here has been mapped as 20 meters wide, but it's probably thicker. Most of the ridge behind the roadcut is sandstone injectite - it's 80 meters wide on the ridgetop.

Geologic unit: thick injectite dike of Tava Sandstone, Neoproterozoic, possibly ~680 to 800 Ma

Locality: roadcut along the northern side of County Road 25 (Trout Creek Road), just west of the entrance to the Innovation Park gated community, southwest of the town of Woodland Park, northeastern Teller County, central Colorado, USA (38° 59’ 03.90” North latitude, 105° 04’ 38.69” West longitude)

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Some info. from:

Siddoway & Gehrels (2014) - Basement-hosted sandstone injectites of Colorado: a vestige of the Neoproterozoic revealed through detrital zircon provenance analysis. Lithosphere 6: 403-408.