Conflicting evidence on the timing of mesothermal and paleoplacer gold mineralisation in early Proterozoic rocks from Southwest Ghana, West Africa

Abstract

Rocks of early Proterozoic age (ca. 2100 Ma) host the major gold deposits in Ghana. The deposits are either located in mesothermal quartz vein systems or hosted in a quartz pebble conglomerate that represents a paleoplacer. Both types of mineralisation are largely confined to the Ashanti Belt, one of four parallel northeast-trending volcanic belts. While the stratigraphy and structure of the belts are similar, the Ashanti belt is characterised by a more tectonised northwest margin where most of the epigenetic gold deposits are located. In these deposits, gold mineralisation is located in faults that parallel the regional trend of the belts and were active late in the deformation history of the terrane. The auriferous quartz pebble conglomerate is part of a clastic sequence that is largely derived from the adjacent volcanic and plutonic rocks with the gold widely regarded as having originated from eroded vein deposits. Structural data, however, show that both the volcanic rocks and clastic sequence were deformed jointly prior to epigenetic gold mineralisation. Thus, the quartz vein deposits could not have been the source of the paleoplacer mineralisation. The paleoplacer gold could have originated from one of several possible sources but none has been unequivocally identified.