Cataclasis involves the granulation, crushing, or milling of the original rock, then rigid-body rotation and translation of mineral grains or aggregates before lithification.
[1] Sibson's 1977 classification of fault rocks was the first to include an understanding of the deformation mechanisms involved and all subsequent schemes have been based on this.
[2][3] Fault breccias have been further classified in terms of their origins; attrition, distributed crush and implosion brecciation,[4] and, borrowing from the cave-collapse literature, crack, mosaic and chaotic from their clast concentration.
Cataclastic rocks form by brittle processes in the upper part of the crust in areas of moderate to high strain, particularly in fault zones.
[6] Cataclastic flow is the main deformation mechanism accommodating large strains above the brittle–ductile transition zone.