Mode of formation of an earliest Pliocene — Latest Miocene, basaltic, pillow-lava pile present at Pentecost island, new Hebrides, and its bearing on the formation of basaltic rudite

Abstract

A well exposed, gently tilted, 400 m-high, earliest Pliocene-Latest Miocene, basaltic, pillow-lava pile in Northern Pentecost, New Hebrides contains two large rafts of sediment. These rafts are considered to be important in unravelling how such deep water, pillow-lavapiles develop. It is thought that after early laccolithic intrusion beneath a sediment cover, possibly only 10 m thick, that lava bulged the overlying sediment upwards budding off pillows at localities where upward bulging had created voids.