Temporal relations between mineral deposits and global tectonic cycles

Abstract

Mineral deposits are heterogeneously distributed in both space and time, with variations reflecting tectonic setting, evolving environmental conditions, as in the atmosphere and hydrosphere, and secular changes in the Earth's thermal history. The distribution of deposit types whose settings are tied to plate margin processes (e.g. orogenic gold, volcanic-hosted massive sulphide, Mississippi valley type Pb-Zn deposits) correlates well with the supercontinent cycle, whereas deposits related to intra-cratonic settings and mantle-driven igneous events, such as Ni-Cu-PGE deposits, lack a clear association. The episodic distribution of deposits tied to the supercontinent cycle is accentuated by selective preservation and biasing of rock units and events during supercontinent assembly, a process that encases the deposit within the assembled supercontinent and isolates it from subsequent removal and recycling at plate margins.Gold Open Access: This article is published under the terms of the CC-BY 3.0 license.The regional framework of mineral deposits and mineral provinces provides fundamental information essential for successful long-term exploration and discovery. Critical data that can be gleaned from regional studies include stratigraphic, structural and tectonic controls and geophysical, geochemical and isotopic data, all of which constrain the setting, extent and age of a mineral province and focus exploration on the location of individual deposits. Equally important and perhaps less well understood are the broad-scale processes associated with the development of continental lithosphere and their control on mineral deposit type and distribution. It has long been recognized that the distribution of deposit types is related to tectonic setting, for example, gold in orogenic settings and clastic-dominated Pb -Zn ores in extensional settings (Mitchell & Garson 1981;Goldfarb et al. 2001;Leach et al. 2010, and references therein). The temporal and spatial distribution of deposits is related to features specific to the generation of each of these tectonic environments. In this contribution, we discuss the controls on the preservation of the rock archive and how that impinges on the distribution of mineral deposit types. Ore deposits generated in different tectonic settings have different likelihoods of survival, and the supercontinent cycle imparts a preservational bias that is an intrinsic characteristic of the age distribution of many mineral deposits and the proportions of mineral deposits from different tectonic settings preserved in the rock record. Temporal relations between mineral deposits and global tectonic cyclesMineral deposits are heterogeneously distributed in both space and time (Lindgren 1909;Turneaure 1955;Meyer 1988;Barley & Groves 1992;Titley 1993;Groves et al. 2005b;Kerrich et al. 2005;Groves & Bierlein 2007;Bierlein et al. 2009;Goldfarb et al. 2010). Barley & Groves (1992) suggested that this uneven distribution is related to three major factors: (a) evolution of the hydrosphere -atmosphere...

Multicommodity mineral systems analysis highlighting mineral prospectivity in the Halls Creek Orogen

“…Key controlling processes on the formation and preservation of mineral systems include large scale processes such as the secular evolution of the Earth, lithospheric controls on mineral enrichment, and geodynamic drivers (Cawood and Hawkesworth, 2013;Groves and Bierlein, 2007;McCuaig et al, 2010;McCuaig and Hronsky, 2014). Of these processes, lithospheric enrichment and geodynamic drivers are directly linked to plate tectonics and the kinematics of plate motion, that is related to formation and breakup of supercontinents (Cawood and Hawkesworth, 2013;Goldfarb et al, 2001).…”

“…Of these processes, lithospheric enrichment and geodynamic drivers are directly linked to plate tectonics and the kinematics of plate motion, that is related to formation and breakup of supercontinents (Cawood and Hawkesworth, 2013;Goldfarb et al, 2001). Mineralisation processes related to the secular evolution of the Earth require that some styles of ore deposits only formed during certain periods of the Earth's history (Cline et al, 2005;Leach et al, 2010).…”

Ore deposits in an evolving Earth: an introduction

“…Groves & Bierlein 2007;Goldfarb et al 2010;Maier & Groves 2011). However, Cawood & Hawkesworth (2013) caution that the spatial and temporal distribution of ore deposits is likely to be preservationally biased, with different deposits affected to greater or lesser extents depending on their tectonic setting. Only small volumes of magma are produced in the collisional phase of the super-continent cycle, but their preservation potential is very high.…”

“…Although Archaean crust represents ,6% of the volume of current continental crust (Cawood & Hawkesworth 2013), it contains c. 25% of the gold resource (Goldfarb et al 2001), c. 60% of the komatiite-hosted Ni resource (Naldrett 2010) and c. 25% of the mass of all BIF (Bekker et al 2010). Although it has long been apparent that known occurrences of these mineralization types are not homogeneously distributed throughout a craton, controls on their distribution are not well understood.…”

“…On a global scale, the wellrecognized secular variation in the formation of BIF with time (e.g. Cawood & Hawkesworth 2013) is attributed to both the increase in oxygenation of the ocean-atmosphere system and the prevalence of large igneous provinces that reflect mantle plume breakout events and an increased hydrothermal flux to the oceans (Bekker et al 2010). Angerer et al (2014) show that, on a regional scale, the formation of a suitable primary host BIF is a function of the stratigraphic and geodynamic setting (cf.…”