Chemical differences between minerals from mineralizing and barren intrusions associated with molybdenum mineralization at Climax, Colorado

Abstract

At Climax, comagmatic igneous intrusions can be subdivided into two groups, mineralizing stocks which are parent intrusions for Mo orebodies and barren stocks. Magmatic biotites in mineralizing stocks are similar to hydrothermal biotites in that they contain a greater proportion of Si-enriched and Ti-depleted compositional domains than do magmatic biotites in barren stocks. A similar trend of Si-enrichment correlated with Ti-depletion is also recorded in biotites from the Bingham porphyry copper deposit. Such trends are attributed to vapour exsolution associated with mineralization. Mo concentrations of magmatic biotites, as determined by ion-probe analysis, from mineralizing stocks (av. 40 gg/g) and barren stocks (av. 33 μ/g) at Climax are similar, being in the same order of magnitude as magmatic biotite Cu concentrations in mineralizing and barren (type A) intrusions in North American porphyry copper deposits (Hendry et al., 1985). These Cu and Mo values are more than a factor of 10 lower than Cu concentrations commonly recorded in magmatic mafic phases in barren (type B) South West Pacific and Australian granitic systems that are temporally distinct from mineralizing events, and are consistent with the magmatic-hydrothermal origin for the Climax deposits proposed by White et al. (1981).