Geological Setting and Controls on the Development of Graphite, Sillimanite and Phosphate Mineralization within the Jiamusi Massif: An Exotic Fragment of Gondwanaland Located in North-Eastern China?

Abstract

China is the world's biggest producer and exporter of graphite and also possesses the world's largest reserves of crystalline graphite. One of the main production areas is in northeastern China around Jixi, in Heilongjiang Province, where graphite, sillimanite and phosphate form in original sedimentary horizons within the Mashan Group. The Mashan Group is composed of khondalitic metasediments and tectonically interleaved orthogneisses, all metamorphosed to granulite facies. The peak conditions have been calculated at 800–850°C at 5.3–6.2 kb and the P–T–t path defines a tight clockwise loop involving simultaneous decrease in temperature and pressure, falling to 410–490°C at less than 3 kb. This metamorphic event is interpreted as resulting from continent–continent collision, with emplacement of mantle–derived mafic magma and possible delamination at the base of the crust. Metamorphism has been precisely dated at 500 Ma, using U–Pb zircon SHRIMP techniques. It appears likely that this terrane formed part of an originally more extensive orogenic belt of Late Pan–African age. Rocks of similar age are recorded from east Antarctica, Western Australia, India and Sri Lanka, suggesting that the Mashan Group was most likely juxtaposed with these areas within Gondwanaland. The mechanism by which the Mashan Group arrived at its present position between the Siberian and North China Cratons is poorly constrained, but it appears likely that, along with the North China, South China and Tarim Blocks, it underwent a northward drift from an initial location off northern Australia to finally dock with the Siberian Craton in the Late Permian to Late Jurassic.