A Review of Boron-Bearing Minerals (Excluding Tourmaline) in the Adirondack Region of New York State

Abstract

Boron is a biologically important element, but its distribution in the natural environment and its behavior during many geological processes is not fully understood. In most metamorphic and igneous environments, boron is incorporated into minerals of the tourmaline supergroup. In high-grade metamorphic terranes like that of the Adirondack region of northern New York State, uncommon rock compositions combined with unusual and variable geologic conditions resulted in the formation of many additional boron-bearing minerals. This paper reviews the occurrences and geological settings of twelve relatively uncommon boron-bearing minerals in the southern Grenville Province of upstate New York and provides new chemical and Raman spectral data for seven of these minerals. The boron minerals range from relatively simple metal borates (e.g., vonsenite), to chemically complex borosilicates (e.g., prismatine), to a relatively rare borosilicate-carbonate (e.g., harkerite). Some are of primary igneous origin, while others are formed by a variety of prograde and retrograde metamorphic processes or by metasomatic/hydrothermal processes. Most of the boron minerals are formed within, or adjacent to, metasedimentary lithologies that surround the anorthositic massifs of the central Adirondacks. The metasedimentary rocks are thought to be the source of most of the boron, although additional boron isotope studies are needed to confirm this and to constrain the mechanisms of the formation of these unusual minerals.

Boron isotope compositions establish the origin of marble from metamorphic complexes: Québec, New York, and Sri Lanka

“…All of the Grenville Province marble samples examined here are hosted in part of the Grenville Supergroup (Baillieul 1976;Gerdes and Valley 1994;Chamberlain et al 1999;Bailey et al 2019;Chiarenzelli et al 2019). These marbles are characterized by their abundance of large, well-formed minerals in crystal "pockets" due to the local dissolution of the calcite matrix (Chiarenzelli et al 2019).…”

“…As stated earlier, several models have been proposed for the origin of the multi-colored marbles from the Grenville Province, and these include; 1. Interaction of regional fluids released from surrounding metasediments, whether intrusion-related or not (Kitchen and Valley 1995;Bailey et al 2019;Chiarenzelli et al 2019); 2. Metasomatism or melting of pre-existing carbonate deposit(s) via mantle-derived fluids (Moyd 1990;Lentz 1999;Sinaei-Esfahani 2013;Martin 2016, Schumann et al 2019); 3.…”

“…DOI: https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2021-7811. http://www.minsocam.org/ from surrounding metasediments (Kitchen and Valley 1995;Bailey et al 2019;Chiarenzelli et al 2019). The degree of interaction with additional crustal-derived fluids depends on the exact location of each sample.…”

“…DOI: https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2021-7811. http://www.minsocam.org/ and influx of regional fluids from surrounding metasediments (Kitchen and Valley 1995;Bailey et al 2019); 2. Localized interaction between limestone and an intrusive body that released fluids forming a skarn-type deposit (Gerdes and Valley 1994;Chiarenzelli et al 2019); 3.…”

Editorial for Special Issue “Minerals of the Southern Grenville Province”

“…In the review paper on the boron-bearing minerals (excluding tourmaline) in the Adirondack region of New York, Bailey et al [16] provide new chemical and Raman spectral data on twelve boron minerals from the Adirondack Mountains. Chemically, the B-minerals reported in this paper range from metal borates (vonsenite) to complex borosilicates (prismatine) or borosilicate-carbonate (harkerite) mineral species that have a wide range of origins from igneous (dumortierite, prismatine), regional metamorphism (kornerupine, warwickite, serendibite, danburite), skarns (danburite, datolite, harkerite, serendibite, sinhalite, vonsenite) to retrograde/metasomatic origin (datolite, grandidierite).…”