The timing of gold mineralization in White Bay, western Newfoundland: Evidence from 40Ar/39Ar studies of mafic dykes that predate and postdate mineralization

• Published in: Atlantic Geology
• Main Authors: Kerr, Andrew, van Breeman, Otto
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Atlantic Geoscience Society 2007
• Subjects: White Bay; Rattling Brook; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/ag/article/view/5623

The Rattling Brook deposit is a low-grade, disseminated to stockwork-style gold deposit hosted by Precambrian granodiorite and adjacent Cambrian sedimentary rocks. Alteration and gold mineralization also occur in foliated and metamorphosed mafic dykes, likely of late Precambrian age. The auriferous granodiorite is in turn cut by relatively fresh, unaltered, and locally chilled diabase dykes, interpreted as Paleozoic post-mineralization intrusions. A fresh post-mineralization diabase gave a 40Ar/39Ar amphibole plateau age of 412.9 ± 4.3 Ma, which is interpreted as the time of its crystallization, and which provides a younger limit for the timing of gold mineralization. An altered, metamorphosed dyke of pre-mineralization timing gave an identical 40Ar/39Ar biotite plateau age of 412.6 ± 2.3 Ma, which is more difficult to interpret. It could represent post-metamorphic cooling, or alternatively, resetting of metamorphic biotite during alteration related to gold mineralization. In the first case, the age provides a reasonable upper limit for the timing of gold mineralization, provided that the ambient temperature during mineralization was not significantly above the closure temperature for Ar in biotite (~ 300 oC). On this basis, gold mineralization at Rattling Brook occurred during the latest Silurian or earliest Devonian, between 415 and 409 Ma. The possibility that mineralization occurred at temperatures above 300 oC, prior to 415 Ma, cannot be completely excluded, but it must be younger than ca. 430 Ma, the time of peak metamorphism in adjacent areas. In conjunction with sparse data on the ages of gold deposits elsewhere in Newfoundland, the results support two discrete episodes of mineralization corresponding to the Silurian-Devonian boundary (420–410 Ma) and middle to late Devonian (380–370 Ma). These age groupings resemble those defined by recent Re-Os isotopic studies of sulphides from vein-style gold deposits in the Meguma terrane of Nova Scotia and may in part correspond to the timing of intrusion-related ...