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the bedrock

rhyolite

granite that erupted · red and flow-banded

rhyolite, drawn
the drawing
rhyolite, photographed
the real thing

The tell

Fine-grained and light colored, usually pink, red or tan, too fine to pick out crystals, and it scratches glass. Some pieces carry big blocky feldspars floating in that fine background and plenty carry none at all. Granite is crystalline everywhere you look; rhyolite's background is smooth.

Color is doing most of the work here. Separating rhyolite from dacite or trachyte by eye is not something anyone can honestly do on a beach.

Same chemistry as granite, cooled fast instead of slow. It is what granite would have been if it had reached the surface.

What it gets mistaken for

The facts

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