Abstract
The Strange Lake Zr, Y, REE, Nb, and Be deposit is hosted by a small, high-level, Late-Proterozoic peralkaline granite stock that intruded into high-grade metamorphic gneisses on the Quebec-Labrador border. The stock is extensively altered. Early alteration is manifested by the replacement of arfvedsonite with aegirine. Later alteration involved Ca-Na exchange. Zr, Ti, Y, REEs, Nb, and Be are concentrated in Ca-bearing minerals that, together with quartz, commonly pseudomorph Na-bearing minerals. Fluid inclusions in pseudomorphs comprise several distinct types: high-salinity (13 to 24 wt% NaCl eq.), Ca-rich aqueous inclusions that homogenize to liquid between 135 and 195°C; mixed aqueousmethane inclusions; methane inclusions; and solid-bearing inclusions. Aqueous-methane inclusions represent heterogeneous entrapment of immiscible high-salinity aqueous liquid and methane. Bastnäsite (tentatively identified by SEM analysis) occurs as a daughter mineral. Other daughter or trapped minerals include a Y, HREE-bearing mineral, possibly gagarinite, and hematite, galena, sphalerite, fluorite, pyrochlore, kutnahorite (?), and griceite (?). The first three inclusion types also occur in quartz in pegmatites and veins together with lower-temperature, lower-salinity, Na-dominated aqueous inclusions. The entrapment temperature inferred for the aqueous inclusions from microthermometry and the Na-K-Ca geothermometer range from 155 to 195°C for the higher-salinity inclusions and 100 to 165°C for the low-salinity inclusions. A model is proposed in which the intrusion of a peralkaline granite to high crustal levels initiated a ground/formational water-dominated hydrothermal system in adjacent gabbroic, calc-silicate, and graphitic gneisses. Reaction of the high-salinity, Ca-rich liquid with the graphitic gneisses led to the production of an immiscible methane gas. Subsequent interaction of this liquid with the granite led to extensive replacement of sodic minerals by calcium analogues at temperatures of less than 200°C. Some time after the onset of Ca metasomatism the high-salinity liquid mixed with a Ca-poor, low-salinity, low-temperature liquid that had leached F and rare metals from the granite. Yttrium and REE mineral deposition occurred as a result of the decreased ligand concentration that accompanied fluorite deposition during mixing of the Ca-rich and Ca-poor aqueous liquids.
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