Localization of PGE mineralization in southeastern Russia

Abstract

Southeastern Russia occupies an area south of the Siberian Platform and east of Lake Baikal, up to the coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. Most of PGE placers are localized south of the Siberian Platform, mainly within the Baikal-Aldan-Stanovoi megablock. Noble-metal placers formed by PGE minerals in varying amounts are associated with the regional mafic-ultramafic complexes of different ages, namely, layered, zoned (ring) massifs and ophiolite fields. PGE mineralization is also found in layered carbonaceous strata of different ages and in several brown-coal deposits localized in the Cenozoic zones of dispersed rifting and intraplate magmatism. One of the magmatism centers is the Ussuri plume structure. The widespread regional manifestations of plume magmatism of different ages permit the development of a new approach to study the additional factors that affected the formation and localization of PGE mineralization. Based on geological, geophysical, geochemical, and mineralogical data, we have established that the conditions favorable for the formation of platinum-bearing deposits were mainly due to ore-generating plume magmatism. This magmatism gave rise to layered (in the Neoarchean and Proterozoic) and zoned (in the Phanerozoic) mafic-ultramafic massifs, which were later subjected to ore-producing magmatogene-fluid-metasomatic processes. The most favorable conditions for PGE concentration appeared in zones where late granite deposits were superposed on early layered, zoned massifs, ophiolite complexes, and layered carbonaceous strata.