Hydrothermal remobilisation around a deformed and remobilised komatiite-hosted Ni-Cu-(PGE) deposit, Sarah’s Find, Agnew Wiluna greenstone belt, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia

Abstract

The Sarah’s Find nickel deposit, located 4.5 km north of the Mount Keith nickel mine, Western Australia, was chosen as a case study to investigate the nature and three-dimensional geometry of a geochemical halo created by the hydrothermal remobilisation of base metals and platinum group elements into the country rock surrounding a small massive Ni sulphide orebody. Portable and laboratory-based XRF analyses were carried out on samples from a shear zone localised along the basal komatiite-dacite contact that hosts the orebody. A geochemical halo was identified that extends along the shear zone up to 1780 m away from the massive sulphides, parallel to a prominent stretching lineation. Elevated Ni and Pd are associated with high As, Co, Cu and S. Palladium and Pt concentrations increase with proximity to massive sulphides (from 6 to 1190 ppb Pd). These anomalous concentrations reflect the presence of sulfarsenides and sulphides, either physically remobilised and forming veinlets close to the massive sulphides, or hydrothermally transported and redeposited within the foliation. In situ laser ablation ICP-MS indicates that Pd and Pt are hosted within these nickel sulfarsenides. This Ni-Co-As-Pd geochemical halo, observed around the Sarah’s Find ore body, is interpreted as forming syn deformation, by the circulation of As-rich hydrothermal fluids dissolving base metals, Pd and Pt from the orebody and redepositing them along the sheared footwall contact. Similar Ni-Co-Pd-Pt-As geochemical haloes could potentially exist around any magmatic nickel sulphide mineral system that has undergone a phase of arsenic metasomatism and may be a generally applicable proximity indicator for nickel sulphides in hydrothermally altered terranes.