Abstract
El Sela shear zone occurs in the younger granite rock of Gabal El Sela area, south Eastern Desert, Egypt near the Sudan Frontier. It comprises lines–arranged intrusions trending ENE-WSW and extend for about 1.5 km in length and reach up to 40 meters in width. These lines–arranged intrusions include multi-phase quartz veins, altered microgranite and altered basic dykes. These dykes hosting or acting as a source for uranium, rare metals (Zr, Y, Nb and Ga) and light rare earths (La, Ce, Sm and Nd) mineralizations. They show highly alteration, uranium enrichment and a strong enrichment in some rare metals and light rare earths contents (Zr = 644, Y = 133, Nb = 136, Ga =184, La = 50.19, Ce = 105.47, Sm = 24.81, Nd = 78.91 ppm and and ∑ LREEs = 259.38.). The chondrite normalised rare earth elements trends indicate strongly fractionated rare earth elements pattern with significant enriched of LREE according to HREE in both altered microgranite and altered basic dykes. Field radiometric measurements of the studied altered microgranite dyke revealed that eU reach up to 359 ppm with an average 78 ppm, while in the altered basic dyke reach up to 1625 ppm with an average 144 ppm.
Highlights
El Sela shear zone is located in Gabal El Sela area in the southern extremity of the Eastern Desert of Egypt near the Sudan Frontier and occupies the southern half of Elba topographic sheet (NF-37 I)
The present paper summarizes the geology, petrology, geochemistry and mineralization of the altered microgranite and altered basic dykes cutting in El Eela shear zone, south Eastern Desert, Egypt
The higher content in some rare metal and rare earth mineralizations of the altered basic dyke relative to the altered microgranite dyke due to several reactivation of the shear zone (ENE-WSW) with normal fault movement accompanied with hydrothermal fluids lead to the intense alteration of basic dyke with completely altered to clayey materials rich with secondary uranium and some rare metal and rare earths mineralization without any relics of the primary mineralogy
Summary
El Sela shear zone is located in Gabal El Sela area in the southern extremity of the Eastern Desert of Egypt near the Sudan Frontier and occupies the southern half of Elba topographic sheet (NF-37 I) It lies at a distance of about 22 km SW of Abu-Ramad city (Figure 1). The most important studies are Gaafar et al (2006), who studied the gamma ray spectrometry of a promising vein type uranium mineralization associated with El Sela granite, and concluded that the detailed ground gamma ray spectrometric survey on Sela shear zone clearly reflects the outline of this zone, where the sheared lamprophyre dyke of this zone show sharp increase of the eU contents and Aly and Lentz (2011), they studied the mineralogy, geochemistry and age dating of shear zone-hosted Nb-Ta-, Zr-Hf-, Th and U-bearing granitic rocks in the Ghadir and El-Sella areas, South Eastern Desert, Egypt. They concluded that the rare metal minerals of mineralized altered granites within El-Sella shear zones are columbite-tantalite minerals as ferrocolumbite, pyrochlore, and fergusonite, Th-minerals (cheralite, uranothorite, and huttonite monazite), Hf-zircon, monazite and xenotime
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