Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	20° 55' 56'' South , 118° 28' 26'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-20.93248,118.47403
GeoHash:	G#: qsk0zvq5k
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	BWh : Hot deserts climate

Iron ore mine. Located 65 kilometres south of Port Hedland, and 10 kilometres west of the Great Northern Highway.

The tenements were held by Domain Mining, then De Grey Mining Pty Ltd, who sold their iron ore rights to Atlas Iron Limited. Atlas opened a small scale mine here in October 2012, removing virtually the entire eastern side of the hill. It was the third small iron ore mine developed by Atlas in the North Pilbara region.

The resource was 2.3 Mt, and operated for two years before being closed, which was its expected life.

Mount Dove is an isolated hill, rising 75 metres, and 50 metres above the surrounding flat sand plain. It lies in the North Pilbara granite-greenstone terrane of the Pilbara Craton. Mount Dove lies in the middle of a magnetic anomaly on the southern boundary of the Central Pilbara Tectonic Zone, and abutting Carlindi Domain.

Ore was mined from Cleaverville Formation, which belongs to the George Creek Group of the Pilbara Supergroup. The Cleaverville Formation consists of greenstone, banded iron formation, ferruginous chert, ferruginous shale and tuff.

The rock consist of 1-2 cms thick alternating bands of magnetite bearing, and magnetite free chert, or more distinct bands up to 1 cm thick of aggregate euhedral magnetite with magnetite chert bands. Magnetite is sometimes replaced with goethite. The surrounding plain consists of alluvial clay, silt, and sand.

Mount Dove is an isolated hill, with the nearest other hill being 12 kilometres away. These rises attract fauna as a animal habitat. It was surprising the mine was given the go-ahead considering the rich fauna found at the site, and severe impact mining would have on the 96 Ha site covered by Mount Dove. This included a healthy population of threatened Northern Quolls, several other mammals, eight bat species, 40 bird species, 29 reptiles, and several insects, including one being rare. A cave was retained on the western side of the hill, inhabited by the Pilbara Leaf Nosed Bat. However mining operations were likely to see the bats leave, and bats do not always return to a site once disturbed.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.

Mineral List

2 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Holocene 0 - 0.0117 Ma ID: 913146

alluvium 38485 Age: Anthropocene (0 - 0.0117 Ma) Description: Channel and flood plain alluvium; gravel, sand, silt, clay; may be locally calcreted Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5]

Mesoarchean - Paleoarchean 2800 - 3600 Ma ID: 3186968

Archean intrusive rocks Age: Archean (2800 - 3600 Ma) Comments: Pilbara Craton Lithology: Intrusive igneous rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References