Note on datolite and other minerals in a contact-altered limestone at Chapel quarry, near Kirkcaldy, Fife

Abstract

The Chapel, or Charlestown Main, Limestone horizon lies in the Lower Limestone Group of the Carboniferous Limestone Series. At Chapel quarry the limestone is underlain by a thick sill of quartz-dolerite. The contact, however, is not exposed but probably lies only a few feet below the quarry floor. Other intrusions are seen in the vicinity: a very thin dike of decomposed basalt, which connects with a small ‘float’ of white trap, cuts the limestone about 30 yards north-eastwards of the point where the quarry crosses the Chapel road, and a small sill of olivine-dolerite or teschenite occurs at a horizon about 100 feet above the top of the limestone. In the quarry the limestone is about 60 feet thick. The contact-alteration described in this paper is most evident near the base of the limestone face and its extension laterally in the quarry has no relation to the outcrop of the thin dike. The alteration is therefore considered to be essentially connected with the underlying, unexposed, sill of quartz-dolerite, and, as will be shown ih the following pages, has been effected by the action of hot solutions rather than by thermal reconstruction.