scholarly journals Geology and crystallization conditions of the Särkiniemiintrusion and related nickel-copper ore, central Finland – implications for depth of emplacement of 1.88 Ga nickel-bearing intrusions

2020 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Hannu V. Makkonen ◽  
◽  
Pekka Tuisku ◽  

Several Ni-Cu deposits occur within the Kotalahti area, central Finland, in proximity to an Archaean gneiss dome surrounded by a Palaeoproterozoic craton-margin supracrustal sequence comprising quartzites, limestones, calc-silicate rocks, black schists and banded diopside amphibolites. The geology of the area and age of the Ni-bearing intrusions (1.88 Ga) are similar to the Thompson Ni belt in the Canadian Trans-Hudson Orogen. The small mafic-ultramafic and Ni-Cu -bearing Särkiniemi intrusion, closely associated with the Archaean basement core of the Kotalahti Dome, is composed of a western peridotite and eastern gabbro body, both of which are mineralized. The eastern gabbro has a contact aureole several meters thick, consisting of orthopyroxene +/- cordierite bearing hornfels between the intrusion and the migmatites. Geochemically, the Särkiniemi intrusion shares many features in common with other Svecofennian mafic-ultramafic intrusions, including crustal contamination and nickel depletion. The related Ni-Cu deposit has a low Ni/Co value (15) and low nickel content in the sulphide fraction (2.8 wt.%), together with a low estimated magma/sulphide ratio of around 170. Svecofennian 1.88 Ga mafic-ultramafic intrusions occur in terrains of variable metamorphic grade (from low-amphibolite to granulite facies) and are likely to represent emplacement at different crustal depths. Multi-equilibrium thermobarometry indicates that the contact aureole at Särkiniemi reached equilibrium at pressures of 4.5–6 kbar (15–20 km depth) and temperatures of 600–670 °C. Combined with the results of earlier research on the Svecofennian intrusions, this study indicates that a depth of 15–20 km crustal level was favourable, along with other critical factors, for nickel sulfide deposition at 1.88 Ga.

1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1888-1909 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Alexander Speer

The petrography and mineral chemistries of the Aphebian Snyder Group pelitic rocks in the contact aureole of the Kiglapait layered intrusion, Labrador reveal a rapid increase in metamorphic grade over 1.7 km from the greenschist facies to the granulite facies. Three zones of metamorphic grade are defined by the aluminum silicates: I, andalusite; II, andalusite + sillimanite; and III, sillimanite. In addition to the succession in the aluminum silicates, progressive metamorphic mineral assemblages, with quartz, K-feldspar, and plagioclase, evolve from chlorite + biotite + muscovite through cordierite + biotite ± muscovite and garnet + cordierite + biotite to orthopyroxene + garnet + cordierite + biotite and eventually either orthopyroxene + cordierite ± biotite or orthopyroxene + garnet + cordierite. Anatectites, believed to be derived from pelitic rocks, intrude as small stocks in zone III. They comprise biotite + cordierite ± garnet ± orthopyroxene monzogranites or granodiorites with accessory ilmenite, rutile, monazite, and dumortierite.The contact metamorphism is isobaric with pressure just above the intersection of the muscovite + quartz decomposition with the andalusite–sillimanite transition. Most published geobarometers place the estimated pressure of metamorphism at 4 ± 1 kbar (400 ± 100 MPa), but use of the lower Holdaway triple point would put it at 2.25 kbar (225 MPa). The temperature ranges from 450 °C in zone I to 900 °C or more adjacent to the Kiglapait intrusion. The range of values of [Formula: see text] is estimated to be 0.1–0.9Ptotal. Because most reactions are dehydration reactions, conditions of [Formula: see text] less than Ptotal allow the metamorphic reactions to buffer the partial pressure of water. This results in the common occurrence of low-variance assemblages and leads to an apparent overlapping of mineral assemblages and mineral chemistries with increasing metamorphic grade.


1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 1759-1774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dexter Perkins III ◽  
Eric J. Essene ◽  
Louise Annette Marcotty

Grenville rocks from a 2500 km2 area centered on Otter Lake, Quebec (some 75 km northwest of Ottawa) are in the uppermost amphibolite to lower granulite facies; orthopyroxene occurs occasionally in both metabasic and charnockitic rocks. The temperature of metapmorphism was approximately 675 °C, based upon oxide, feldspar, and garnet–clinopyroxene thermometry. Little thermal gradient could be detected across the area. Carbonate thermometry, using reintegrated calcite compositions, yielded lower temperatures of 600 °C (maximum), while garnet–biotite and other Kd thermometers yielded scattered and for the most part unreasonable results. Metamorphic pressure, calculated from the reaction anorthite = grossular + sillimanite + quartz, was 5.0 ± 0.5 kbar(500 ± 50 MPa). Similar calculations based upon the reactions garnet + quartz = anorthite + orthopyroxene and garnet + quartz = anorthite + clinopyroxene yielded pressures of 5.5–7.0 kbar (550–700 MPa). Pressure calculations based upon assemblages of cordierite–garnet–sillimanite–quartz were less precise, but agreed with the outer estimates. Similar metamorphic temperatures and slightly lower pressures have been estimated for the Adirondack Lowlands of New York. In the Morin Highlands, 100 km east of Otter Lake, and in the Adirondack Highlands, 100 km east of the Adirondack Lowlands, temperatures of metamorphism (700–800 °C) and pressures of metamorphism (6–9 kbar (600–900 MPa)) are both higher. Thus it appears that over an approximate 300 km north–south direction nearly constant metamorphic conditions prevailed at Grenville time. In the east–west direction significant variations in metamorphic grade are recorded; both temperature and pressure markedly increase to the east.


1976 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1201-1211 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. B. W. Harris ◽  
A. M. Goodwin

The eastern Lac Seul region of the English River Gneiss Belt is divided into two domains defined by contrasting petrology and structure. The northern domain is underlain by east-trending, steeply south-dipping, migmatized metasediments, intruded by occasional granite sills, and the southern domain by gneissic tonalite and trondhjemite, with abundant amphibolite inclusions, intruded by granite dykes and diapirs: this domain has a complex structure with gently east-plunging open folds of about 5 km wavelength. Field evidence suggests that metasediments of the northern domain have been deposited on the tonalite trondhjemite basement, which was subsequently mobilized, thereby producing the steeply dipping paragneiss belt of the northern domain.The grade of metamorphism throughout the region lies in the upper amphibolite facies, rising locally to the granulite facies. Within 15 km of the southern margin of the gneiss belt, the metamorphic grade decreases to the greenschist facies.U–Pb dating of zircons indicates that the tonalite gneiss was emplaced at least 3040 m.y. ago, and the granite plutons at 2660 m.y., coeval with migmatization and upper amphibolite facies metamorphism. Late pegmatites were emplaced at 2560 m.y.


1994 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 1353-1364 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. H. Bostock ◽  
O. van Breemen

The western edge of Rae Province, prior to indentation of Slave Province, is conceived as a compressional tectonic margin in which Archean plutonic rocks were intruded by syntectonic granites of 2.4–2.3 Ga age as a result of eastward subduction. Subsequently this margin was intruded by the 2.0–1.90 Ga granites that characterize the Taltson magmatic zone. The latter granites engulf remnants of a widespread supracrustal assemblage of lower granulite facies metamorphic grade, the age of which has heretofore been unknown. We use U–Pb zircon and monazite geochronology to limit the age of cessation of deposition of these metasediments in a pre-Taltson granite basin to between 2.13 and 2.09 Ga.Similarities in geochronology and isotope geochemistry between western Rae Province and Buffalo Head domain, together with the presence of mafic to ultramafic rocks both within the basin and along the western Rae margin, suggest that basin formation was by rifting. Influx of 2.15 Ga detrital zircons probably from the west, and high-grade metamorphism accompanying basin closure at 2.09 Ga, suggest an eastward (inward) movement of magmatism at that time. A second similar eastward migration of magmatism occurred in association with the Slave–Churchill collision (2.0–1.9 Ga). These relations suggest a complex record of crustal accretion within Buffalo Head and Chinchaga domains, the details of which remain to be established.


2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 412-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Valverde Cardenas ◽  
Aphrodite Indares ◽  
George Jenner

The Canyon domain and the Banded complex in the Manicouagan area of the Grenville Province preserve a record of magmatic activity from ∼1.4 to 1 Ga. This study focuses on 1.4–1.2 Ga mafic rocks and 1 Ga ultrapotassic dykes. Geochemistry and Sm–Nd isotopic signatures were used to constrain the origin of these rocks and evaluate the changing role of the mantle with time and tectonic setting from the late evolution of the Laurentian margin to the Grenvillian orogeny, in the Manicouagan area. The mafic rocks include layers inferred to represent flows, homogeneous bodies in mafic migmatite, and deformed dykes, all of which were recrystallized under granulite-facies conditions during the Grenvillian orogeny. In spite of the complexities inherent in these deformed and metamorphosed mafic rocks, we were able to recognize suites with distinctive geochemical and isotopic signatures. Integration of this data along with available ages is consistent with a 1.4 Ga continental arc cut by 1.2 Ga non-arc basalts derived from depleted asthenospheric mantle, with varied degrees of crustal contamination and inferred to represent magmatism in an extensional environment. The 1 Ga ultrapotassic dykes postdate the Grenvillian metamorphism. They are extremely enriched in incompatible elements, have negative Nb anomalies, relatively unradiogenic Sr-isotopic compositions (initial 87Sr/86Sr ~ 0.7040) and εNd –3 to –15. Some dykes have compositional characteristics consistent with derivation from the mantle, ruling out crustal contamination as a major process in their petrogenesis. The most likely source region for the ultrapotassic dykes is a metasomatized subcontinental lithospheric mantle, with thermal input from the asthenosphere in association with post-orogenic delamination.


1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 646-669
Author(s):  
Peter A. Nielsen

Progressive mineralogical and mineral–chemical changes are described for metapelitic rocks from an Abukuma-type metamorphic series ranging from greenschist to upper amphibolite – granulite facies in the Bear Structural Province, Northwest Territories, Canada.The first appearance of the following minerals defines six isograds: biotite; andalusite; cordierite (muscovite + chlorite out); sillimanite (andalusite out); sillimanite + K-feldspar (muscovite + quartz out); and almandine + K-feldspar ± cordierite (biotite + sillimanite + quartz out).Electron microprobe analyses of the Fe–Mg silicates, biotite, cordierite, and garnet, display two distinct trends of mineral chemistry with increasing metamorphic grade. In the almandine + K-feldspar ± cordierite zone, where garnet is present, Fe/(Fe + Mg) decreases in all of the Fe–Mg silicates observed. However, in the cordierite zone and in the higher grade rocks where garnet is absent, Fe/(Fe + Mg) increases in both biotite and cordierite. Ilmenite and rutile are involved in all continuous reactions and lead to increasing Fe/Mg with grade unless garnet is a product of reaction. There is also a displacement towards lower Fe content at the sillimanite + K-feldspar isograd.The scale of equilibration decreases to 1–2 mm in the almandine + K-feldspar ± cordierite zone, which is most probably a function of the decrease of [Formula: see text] and therefore [Formula: see text]in the metamorphic fluid with increasing metamorphic grade.The physical conditions of metamorphism in the Arseno Lake area range from [Formula: see text] at 2–2.5 kbar with[Formula: see text] in the chlorite zone to ≥650 °C at 3.5–4.0 kbar where [Formula: see text] in the almandine + K-feldspar ± cordierite zone.


Author(s):  
J. V. Owen ◽  
K. L. Currie

ABSTRACTThe Steel Mountain terrane of the southern Long Range Mountains forms a fault-bounded massif of (meta)plutonic rocks including the Disappointment Hill complex (DHC), a sequence of granulite-facies lithologies containing charnockite emplaced at 1498 Ma (U-Pb, zircon). Quartzofeldspathic gneiss of the DHC contains garnet + biotite + orthopyroxene ± cordierite assemblages indicative of metamorphic P–T conditions of ca 750°C and 400 MPa. The relatively high thermal gradient (ca 70°C km−1) inferred for the DHC is attributed to a magmatic heat source.On grounds of lithology, age and metamorphic grade, the DHC correlates to granulites of the Long Range Inlier (LRI) exposed farther north. Both complexes occur in blocks thrust westward over Taconic allochthons capped by ophiolite nappes. The block containing the DHC, however, preserves younger cover rocks, suggesting that it originated at a higher structural level than the LRI. This model is supported by lower pressure estimates for the DHC relative to the LRI (400 MPa vs 500–800 MPa). The DHC forms a link between Grenvillian rocks of the northern Long Range of Newfoundland and those of Cape Breton Island. The structural position of these massifs suggests that their emplacement was a post-Taconic event.


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