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Stockwork vein zone and narrow breccias have not been considered economic
in the past. The economic potential of these zones should be re-assessed to
reflect present metal prices
Banded quartz-sphalerite-chlorite vein with disseminated pyrite. Note coarsegrained quartz and andesite fragments.
Monomict breccia supported by coarse-grained, cockade quartz-galenasphalerite, crosscut by banded and massive quartz and quartz-carbonate veins.
Breccia is offset by late normal faults
These veins of milky quartz are often arranged in lovely en echelon series,
like these tension
Where the two subparallel lodes coincide, mineralisation may reach a faultnormal thickness of 18 meters. Up to 70% of this width can be occupied by
massive fluorite. The two lodes have individual thicknesses ranging between
1.5 and 7 meters. The host rocks of the mineralization experienced very low
grade Hercynian metamorphism and suffered a further retrograde overprint
when the mineralisation formed. This retrograde alteration consists of an
assemblage of chlorite + sericite + minor finely disseminated pyrite.
Note the asymmetric bondinage of the quartz vein that continues to the left of
the tip of the mechanical pencil.
This another photo from the same several hundred meter thick mylonite zone
as above. The cross section view is basically parallel to the lineation and
transport direction. Here the asymmetric geometry and
gashes of the quartzite veins. I have annotated the shear direction in the
pictures below. These tension gashes form at right angles (perpendicular) the
direction of maximum stretching
This conglomerate has been sheared into a lovely L-S tectonite, with X>Y~Z. In
other words, its mostly lineated, with only a weakly-defined foliation, indicating
the stress field was mostly constrictional. (I collected a muddy sample of this
stretched-pebble meta-conglomerate, and when I washed it off in the hotel
shower the next morning, I was delighted what a cool sample I had selected. It
has some awesome structural features; Ill show it to you some other time)
This is a sweet example of how you can get different structures developing in
different orientations relative to the principal stress directions. In this particular
part of the Barberton Greenstone Belt, compression (orange arrows) operated
from the top of the photo towards the bottom, and the rock stretched out from
left to right (green arrows). Folds formed where granite dikes were compressed,
but the same rock in a different orientation was boudinaged Cool, eh?