654

Chapter k PROTOCONTINENTS The Present is the Key to the Past: HUGH RANCE
PLATE TECTONICS AND THE
OCCURRENCE OF ORES
At its heart, mining is defined by economics, just like any other business. An orebody is nothing more
than a mineralized mass that can be mined at a profit. This means that the quantity of ore shrinks and
grows in response to market forces. If there is no market, there are no ore bodies.
Richard E. Gertsch.
1
Iron, aluminum, copper, and zinc, in that order, are volumetrically the most used metals.
2
k37 Metallogenic epochs <anorogenic, orogenic, sedimentary >
The combination of the supercontinent cycle and decreasing heat flow, reflected in the evolution of
the lithosphere and tectonic style, gives economic geologists a remarkable framework for
understanding the timing and distribution of many of the mineral deposits we have come to rely on.
Robert Kerrich, 1992.
3
Geology has a bottom line, and that is kept in the black by discovery and assay of Earth materials.
Cyclicity in the circumstances of various types of ore deposition would be a boon if found. Orogenic
and mobile belts are where many important ores have been formed and cyclicities have been
described by the great synthesizers of geology: Cuvier, de Beaumont, Suess, Umbgrove, Dana,
Chamberlin, Kober, and Stille. However, whatever clear regularity was seen by these imaginative
fixist (syn. stabilist)
4
pattern seekers
5
can only have been for the lack of information. Yet the
parameters and constraints that make reasonable the principle of uniformitarianism do elevate from
the idle, a contemplation of the motion of continents and the occurrence of ores.
We need to be mindful of the observed size, shape, and thickness of plates, and rates of seafloor
spreading and model these (back in time) for the cooling Earth (no blueschists before the
Neoproterozoic).
6
In 1933, Waldemar Lindgren defined a metallogenic epoch as a time interval that was favorable for
the deposition of particularly useful substances. Both metallogenic epoch and metalliferous province
(space distribution of a mineralization, see Topic k38) are useful designations.
The time-space distribution of ores has been very episodic (Figure k37.1). And the often
prospectors claim that the lead, or show , will continue at depth, plays into quips as Mark Twains
that a mine is a hole in the ground owed by a liar.
7
For sedimentary ores, the oxidation state of the environment will have affected dissolution and
precipitation. The free oxygen content of the atmosphere that increased to present levels in the early
Paleozoic neatly accounts for the dearth of ironformation and unconformity-hosted uranium since
the Proterozoic when, also from the fossil evidence of lifes evolution, change to an aerobic, from
an anaerobic, world took place.
Volcanic-hosted Cu, Pb, Zn deposits of the Kuroko and Cyprus types forming today in shallow
marine environments of the island arc depositional complex, are rarely preserved, whereas the Abitibi
type deepwater deposits have been.
8
The scarcity of porphyry Cu and epithermal Au ores before 200 Ma is explained by their low
preservation potential (at high elevation) in rapidly eroded magmatic arcs and collisional mountain
belts. M. E. Barley and D. I. Groves generalize that initial elevation makes what were peripheral
Cordilleran type mountain belts better prospects than internal Himalayan type mountain belts.
9
655
PLATE TECTONICS AND THE OCCURRENCE OF ORES
Mesothermal gold-silver vein deposits, of all ages have been emplaced by large fluid volumes
mobilized through regional faults. Active island arc occurrences and Californian Mother Lode
deposits indicate that these, even back to the Late Archean, are at their most abundant at oblique
convergent (transpressional) plate margins.
Secular decrease in mantle temperature, by cooling and lessening radioactivity, could account for
Kambalda-type komatiite (Footnote k37.1) associated nickel deposits being all older than 2000
My.
Figure k37.1
10
The timing of specific
classes of metal
deposits
(black bars indicate
found world abundances)
Footnote k37.1
Basalts erupt from magma
chambers in which crystal
settling can produce residual
magmas with the composition
of peridotite (>18 % MgO),
which later can be found as
dikes, sills, and flows of
igneous rock called picrite that
typically, as one described by
Andrew C. Kerr from Curaao,
contains subhedral to rounded
olivine phenocrysts. With a
si mi l ar composi ti on, a
komatiite by contrast is defined
by Nick T. Arndt and Euan G.
Nisbet in 1982 as possessing a
wel l -devel oped spi ni fex
texture which, Arndt in 1994
continues, is characterized by
large, skeletal, platy, bladed or
acicular grains of olivine or
pyroxene implying rapid
cooling.
11
Komatiites, which
originate as high temperature
(~1,700 C)
12
mantle melts (not
resi dual magmas), are
ultramafic volcanic rocks most
of which were erupted in the
Archean Era (more than 2.5
Ga, see Chapter L). Those
erupted at later times (for example, the Cretaceous komatiites of Gorgona Island) are rare and these, A. H.
Wilson, S. B. Shirey and R. W. Carlson find, tend to have lower MgO content than their Archaean equivalents.
Komatiites [they generalize] are also characterized by their low incompatible-element content, which is most
consistent with their generation by high degrees of partial (30-50 percent) melting.
13