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The latest Aptian/earliest Albian age of the Kekura gold deposit, Western Chukotka, Russia: implications for mineralization associated with post-collisional magmatism

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Abstract

The Kekura gold deposit (76.2 t Au at 8.1 g/t) is situated in Western Chukotka, a region that hosts several Au, Ag, Cu, and Mo deposits and prospects. The Kekura deposit is related to the eponymous granite intrusion that is cut by porphyry dikes. The U-Pb zircon age of one of these dikes is 112 ± 1 Ma (2σ) that corresponds to the latest Aptian/earliest Albian. Both intrusion and dikes are hydrothermally altered and are cut by gold-quartz and molybdenite-quartz veins and stringers. Two molybdenite samples yield Re-Os model ages of 112.5 ± 0.6 and 112.3 ± 0.6 Ma (2σ). These Re-Os ages indicate the close temporal relationship between the molybdenite mineralization and the porphyry dikes. The age of the Kekura mineral system is similar to that of the post-collisional granitic plutons of the Anyui zone spatially scattered, between 140 and 210 km northwest of Kekura. We suggest that this temporal relationship may increase the likelihood of further discoveries of economic gold mineralization related to the currently underexplored Aptian post-collisional magmatic complexes of the Western Chukotka area.

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Acknowledgments

David Selby acknowledges the Total endowment fund and a CUG (Wuhan) scholarship. We thank Highland Gold Mining Limited for the access to samples and the Centre of Isotopic Research at VSEGEI for performing the zircon dating. Yulia Khabibullina, Maria Volkova, Antonia Hofmann, Geoff Nowell, and Chris Ottley are acknowledged for technical support. The authors also would like to sincerely thank Prof. Dr. Bernd Lehmann for reading the manuscript, for correcting it, and for his constructive comments and suggestions which resulted in greatly improving it. Thanks are also extended to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions and comments.

Funding

This study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research according to the research project no. 18-35-20034. The work by Petr L. Tikhomirov was supported by NEISRI Research Program (0288-2017-0002) and Far East Branch of RAS (grant no. 18-2-015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry RAS, 19 Kosygin Str., Moscow, 119991, Russia

    Ekaterina V. Nagornaya

  2. Faculty of Geology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, GSP-1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991, Russia

    Ekaterina V. Nagornaya, Ivan A. Baksheev & Petr L. Tikhomirov

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK

    David Selby

  4. State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, School of Earth Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    David Selby

  5. North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute, 16 Portovaya Str., Magadan, 685000, Russia

    Petr L. Tikhomirov

Authors
  1. Ekaterina V. Nagornaya
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  2. Ivan A. Baksheev
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  3. David Selby
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  4. Petr L. Tikhomirov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ekaterina V. Nagornaya.

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Editorial handling: B. Lehmann

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Electronic supplementary material

ESM Fig. 1

A field photograph looking east over the Kekura deposit area. The dashed line partly outlines the mineralized outcrop (PDF 77 kb)

ESM Fig. 2

Photographs of molybdenite-bearing samples of the altered granodiorite porphyry: (a) sample 66842-40168 – quartz-molybdenite vein and (b) sample 4015-6605 – disseminated molybdenite (PDF 135 kb)

ESM Fig. 3

Images of zircon grains from granodiorite porphyry sample 66842-40168: (a) photograph of zircon grains under an optical binocular microscope and (b) cathodoluminescent image of the zircon grains showing the oscillatory zoning parallel to the crystal faces and the position of the secondary ion microprobe (SHRIMP-II) analyses (PDF 67 kb)

ESM Table 1

U-Pb data for zircons from sample 66842-40168 from the Kekura gold deposit (PDF 87 kb)

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Nagornaya, E.V., Baksheev, I.A., Selby, D. et al. The latest Aptian/earliest Albian age of the Kekura gold deposit, Western Chukotka, Russia: implications for mineralization associated with post-collisional magmatism. Miner Deposita 55, 1255–1262 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00126-020-00969-7

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