Tourmalinization in the Skiddaw Group around Crummock Water, English Lake District

Abstract

AbstractVeins of tourmalinite were formed by wallrock alteration adjacent to steep fractures in bleached, indurated Skiddaw Group metasedimentary rocks around Crummock Water, north-west Lake District. The vein rock is a fine-grained granoblastic mosaic of tourmaline, quartz, and minor rutile in which bedding is preserved. Brecciation, in which tourmalinite fragments are set in a coarser quartz-tourmaline matrix, is present in some veins. Networks of cross-cutting quartz veinlets with tourmaline, chlorite, and muscovite are very common. The tourmaline is intermediate schorl dravite and mostly brown in plane polarized light, though prisms in breccia matrix and veinlets have blue, low-Ti cores and brown rims. Comparison of tourmalinite and host-rock analyses indicates almost complete loss during tourmalinization of K, Rb, Li, Ba, As, and La, plus depletion in Ce, Y, Na, Sr, P, and Mn. The elements Si, B, Mo, and erratically, minor F, W, and Sn were introduced. Cu, Pb, Zn, and Ca show both gains and losses probably due to initial depletion and subsequent local enrichment. Reduction in Al, Zr, and Ti concentrations relates to dilution by introduced silica. The tourmalinite veins were formed by the action of hydrothermal fluids derived from the concealed late-Caledonian granitic intrusion responsible for the thermal metamorphism of the country rocks.