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CARBONATE
Environment: Mesothermal
Alteration: Carbonate
Characteristics
Carbonate alteration is cream, buff or green in colour and weathers to a rusty brown. It
commonly forms bleached envelopes to auriferous quartz veins in mafic to ultramafic rocks.
Large zones of pervasive carbonate alteration host gold mineralization in some deposits.
Dominant carbonate minerals include ankerite, calcite, dolomite and magnesite.
Hand Specimen: Carbonate is massive or foliated and reacts variably with cold dilute HCI.
The alteration may be green when it contains cliromian muscovite. Sulphide content is
generally less than I%.
Thin Section: Carbonates are characterized by their high birefringence and relief.
Deformation lamellae are common,
and grain size is highly variable. Spaced, pressure-solution cleavage is common and is
defined by laminae phyllosilicates. Carbonates may pseudomorph mafic minerals or
feldspar.
Related Minerals
Discussion
References
Leitch, C.H.B., Godwin C.I., Brown, T.H. and Taylor, B.E., 1991, Geochemistry of
mineralizing fluids in the
318-353.
Kishida, A. and Kerrich, R., 1987, Hydrothermal alteration zoning and gold concentration
at the Kerr Addison
Archean lode gold deposit, Kirkland Lake, Ontario: Economic Geology,.. v. 82, p. 649-690.
Mueller, A.G. and Groves, D.I., 1991, The classification of Western Australian greenstone-
hosted gold deposits according to wallrock alteration mineral assemblages: Ore Geology
Reviews, v. 6, p. 291-331.
Robert, F. and Brown, A.C., 1986, Archean gold-bearing quartz veins at the Sigma mine,
Abitibi greenstone belt,
Quebec: Part II. Vein paragenesis and hydrothermal alteration: Economic Geology, v. 81, p.
1464-1482.
Figures
both samples. The green colour in the left sample is imparted by chromian muscovite. The
coin on the right core is on a coarse carbonate-quartz vein. Aquarius deposit, east of Timmins,
Ontario. FOY = 12 cm.
13.3 TS (XPL). Massive carbonate alteration, Aquarius deposit east of Timmins, Ontario.
FOY= 5 mm.
FOY= 5 mm.
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