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The Mississippi valley type Zn-Pb-celestite deposits at Wadi Essel, the Eastern Desert of Egypt: fluid inclusions and microthermometry evidences

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Abstract

Sedimentary rocks of the Upper Cretaceous, Middle Miocene, Plio-Pleistocene, and Quaternary periods are present in the Red Sea coastal plain from south of El Quseir to Marsa Alam, and they are dispersed over Late Proterozoic basement rocks. The zinc and lead ores intercalated with celestite in Wadi Essel are dispersed throughout the adjacent rocks and intense in Middle Miocene sedimentary strata in clastic rocks. This work studied the fluid inclusions hosted in the celestite, which is in close to the lead–zinc mineralization, to measure the microthermometric parameters giving knowledge about the nature, composition and the condition of formation of celestite as well as lead- zinc mineralization. The fluid inclusions study for the celestite revealed that this celestite deposited from saline water (up to 9.054 wt% NaCl eq.) with density up to 1.045 g/cm3 and the deposition of the celestite probably took place at temperatures between 50 and 75 °C for Wadi Essel celestite as well as accompanying lead–zinc sulphide, which considered as Mississippi valley type (MVT) Pb–Zn deposits.

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Data Availability

The raw data of the present study is available upon request from the corresponding author (hodaragab@hotmail.com).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Osama Attia, Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, for the fluid inclusion study facilities and Prof. Dr Mohamed Abdel Moneam, Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Assiut University and also, Dr. Ehab Assal, and Dr. Haytham Sehsah, Faculty of science, Damietta university, for their kind help and revising the manuscript.

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  1. Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Damietta University, New Damietta, 34517, Egypt

    Hoda R. Saad

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HRS wrote the manuscript text and prepared figures and reviewed the manuscript.

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Saad, H.R. The Mississippi valley type Zn-Pb-celestite deposits at Wadi Essel, the Eastern Desert of Egypt: fluid inclusions and microthermometry evidences. Carbonates Evaporites 38, 64 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13146-023-00887-5

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