A dike or dyke in geology is a sheet of rock that formed in a crack in a pre-existing rock body.

However, when the crack is between the layers in a layered rock, it is called a sill, not a dike. It
is a type of tabular intrusion, or sheet intrusion, that either cuts across layers in a planar wall
rock structures, or into a layer or unlayered mass of rock.
Dikes can therefore be either intrusive or sedimentary in origin. For example, when molten rock
intrudes into a crack then refreezes, it is an igneous dike. When limestone forms by precipitation
in a pre-existing crack, it is a sedimentary dike.

Magmatic dikes
An intrusive dike is an igneous body with a very high aspect-ratio, which means that its
thickness is usually much smaller than the other two dimensions. Thickness can vary from sub-
centimetre scale to many metres, and the lateral dimensions can extend over many kilometres.
A dike is an intrusion into an opening cross-cutting fissure, shouldering aside other pre-existing
layers or bodies of rock; this implies that a dike is always younger than the rocks that contain it.
Dikes are usually high-angle to near-vertical in orientation, but subsequent tectonic deformation
may rotate the sequence of strata through which the dike propagates so that the dike becomes
horizontal. Near-horizontal, or conformable intrusions, along bedding planes between strata are
called intrusive sills.
Sometimes dikes appear in swarms, consisting of several to hundreds of dikes emplaced more
or less contemporaneously during a single intrusive event. The world's largest dike swarm is the
Mackenzie dike swarm in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
Dikes often form as either radial or concentric swarms around plutonic intrusives, volcanic necks
or feeder vents in volcanic cones. The latter are known as ring dikes.
Dikes can vary in texture and their composition can range from diabase or basaltic to granitic or
rhyolitic, but on a global perspective the basaltic composition prevails, manifesting ascent of
vast volumes of mantle-derived magmas through fractured lithosphere throughout Earth history.
Pegmatite dikes comprise extremely coarse crystalline granitic rocks - often associated with
late-stage granite intrusions or metamorphic segregations. Aplite dikes are fine-grained or
sugary-textured intrusives of granitic composition.

Sedimentary dikes
Sedimentary dikes or clastic dikes are vertical bodies of sedimentary rock that cut off other rock
layers. They can form in two ways:

When a shallow unconsolidated sediment is composed of alternating coarse grained and

impermeable clay layers the fluid pressure inside the coarser layers may reach a critical
value due to lithostatic overburden. Driven by the fluid pressure the sediment breaks
through overlying layers and forms a dike.
When a soil is under permafrost conditions the pore water is totally frozen. When cracks
are formed in such rocks, they may fill up with sediments that fall in from above. The
result is a vertical body of sediment that cuts through horizontal layers: a dike.