Tuffisite with topaz from the Nigerian Younger Granite province — the Balfour Hill ‘sediments’

Abstract

SummaryNear one of the Younger Granite intrusives of the Jos Plateau is a series of steeply dipping dark and predominantly fine grained rocks. Originally interpreted as argillaceous sediments thermally metamorphosed by the adjacent granite, with development of andalusite, later work established their volcanic origin but did not account for the andalusite. Field relationships and petrography of the rocks suggest they are tuffisites, emplaced by volcanic fluidization processes into part of the fracture system associated with the Younger Granite magmatism. The ‘andalusite’ is topaz, widespread in this province, mainly in the Younger Granite tin veins and greisens, sometimes as an accessory in the granites themselves, but not known from the volcanics — yet abundant in some of these tuffisites. It occurs in well formed crystals, displaying a ‘chiastolite-cross’ arrangement of inclusions, characteristic of andalusite but appearing not to have been previously recorded in topaz. The origin of the topaz must lie either in late-volcanic emanations or in hydrothermal fluids from the mineralizing stage of Younger Granite emplacement.