Abstract

Physiographically, Chihuahua includes Sierra Madre Occidental (western) and Mesa Central (eastern) provinces. Stratigraphically, coal occurs in Triassic-Jurassic strata and upper Cretaceous rocks, porphyry Cu-Mo deposits in stocks, fissure-vein Ag-Au lodes in andesite-rhyolite sequences and in Cretaceous sediments, Mn fissure-vein deposits in rhyolitic extrusives, U in fissures and contacts in rhyolites, gypsum in Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous strata, manto Pb-Zn-Ag and stratiform Cu-Ba deposits separately in Lower Cretaceous strata, magmatic segregation and contact Fe deposits in trachyte and rhyolite and adjacent intrusives respectively, and fluorite as mantos and veins in Cretaceous sediments. Assemblages occur in zones that strike NW paralleling other mineral belts in adjacent northwestern Mexico. Temporal, spatial and genetic relationships link magmatic-hydrothermal origin deposits to magmatic suites that vary from calc-alkaline (west) to alkaline (east). Favorable localizing structures include doming by batholiths, normal faulting and contact metamorphism in the Sierra Madre Occidental Orogen and by folding, thrusting and stock emplacement in the eastern Chihuahua Tectonic Belt, all during Laramide time. Mineralization persisted through the Oligocene interval, although post-mineral volcanism continued until Late Cenozoic time. Contemporaneous events in the eastern Pacific basin suggest that tectonism, magmatism and metallogenesis are consistant with a convergent plate model along a continental margin.

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