stripes
Pajarito Mountain in the northeastern part of the Mescalero Indian Reservation is an eroded remnant of 2.8x1.2 km of igneous rocks of Proterozoic age which are mantled by Permian marine sediments. Rock types include syenite, melasyenite, quartz syenite and syenitic pegmatite dykes. Most of the complex comprises a malasyenite of perthite, with arfvedsonite, plus or minus riebeckite and aegirine-augite or aegirine. This is intruded by quartz syenite and syenite with riebeckite and aegirine. Eudialyte and fluorite are present in both units but are more abundant in the quartz-bearing varieties which include up to 20% eudialyte and 5% fluorite. Late stage pegmatites contain orthoclase, minor microcline and albite, quartz, and aegirine or hornblende partly replaced by aegirine.
FOORD, E.E., MOORE, S.L., MARVIN, R.F. and TAGGART, J.E. 1983. Petrology of the Proterozoic syenites at Pajarito Mountain and the Tertiary igneous complex of the Sierra Blanca region, Otero County, New Mexico. (Abstract) '83 MSA Symposium on Alkaline Complexes, Wausau,Wisconsin.
KELLEY, V.C. 1968. Geology of the alkali Precambrian rocks at Pajarito Mountain, Otero County, New Mexico. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 79: 1565-72.
E. E. Foord, personal communication, 1983.
