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Chert |
  
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Chert |
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It is a dark coloured fine-grained silica rock that occurs as beds in carbonate sequences, shales and iron formations.Chert is a fine-grained silica-rich microcrystalline, cryptocrystalline or microfibrous sedimentary rock that may contain small fossils. It varies greatly in colour (from white to black), but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty red; its colour is an expression of trace elements present in the rock, and both red and green are most often related to traces of iron (in its oxidized and reduced forms respectively).
Chert crops out as oval to irregular nodules in greensand, limestone, chalk, and dolostone formations as a replacement mineral, where it is formed as a result of diagenesis. It also occurs in thin beds, when it is a primary deposit (such as with many jaspers and radiolarites). Thick beds of chert occur in deep geosynclinal deposits. The banded iron formations of Precambrian age are composed of alternating layers of chert and iron oxides.
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