The Skaergaard Intrusion

The Skaergaard instrusion, Kangerlussuaq, East Greenland is one of the most famous geological localities in the world, certainly the most thoroughly researced igneous intrusion. Since The memoir of Wager and Deer in 1939 it has played a key role in petrological thinking, being a type example of the closed system differentiation of the ferro-basaltic magma. Skaergraad's differentiation trend has also figured prominently in the so-called "granite controversy" as to how granites arise as it thought to refute the idea that granites are differentiation products of basaltic magmas (but see a reversal to this idea by Hunter ans Sparks, 1987, who claimed that Skaergaard had indeed produced copius quantites of granitic material).