A number of minerals and residual glasses from absarokites, shoshonites, and latites have been analysed by electron probe.
Clinopyroxenes show very little iron-enrichment and these rocks are thus distinguished from tholeiites and alkali basalts.
Glasses from this group are also distinct from tholeiites and alkali basalts and occupy a separate field on a CaO-Na2O-K2O diagram.