the.com/metamorphic rock
Rock that never died, just got pressured into becoming someone else entirely.
means Rock whose mineral structure has been transformed by intense heat and pressure underground, without fully melting, into a new kind of rock.
from From Greek 'meta' (change) plus 'morphe' (form) — the same 'morph' you see in 'metamorphosis,' the caterpillar-to-butterfly word. Geologists borrowed the term because the process is strikingly similar: limestone squeezed and cooked into marble, shale into slate, granite into gneiss — same material, utterly new form, no melting required, just enough heat and pressure deep in the crust to rearrange its crystals from the inside out.
- origin
- heat and pressure, no melting required
- example
- limestone turns into marble under stress
- timescale
- forms over millions of years, zero therapy
- clue
- often shows banding from squeezed mineral layers