Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	21° 6' 56'' South , 119° 14' 42'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-21.11558,119.24516
GeoHash:	G#: qshzckp8v
Locality type:	Prospect
Köppen climate type:	BWh : Hot deserts climate

Discovered 1982. The prospect is in remote mountainous country west of the Shaw River. The recent haul road construction to the Atlas iron ore mine has made Sulphur Springs somewhat more accessible.

The deposit is part of the Panorama Trend, hosted by the Sulphur Springs Group, consisting of dacite lava, breccia cherts and sedimentary rocks, mineralisation in graben or basin structures around ancient volcanic centres. Resource 10 Mt at 1.4% Cu, 3.5% Zn and 17 g/t Ag.

There is Cu-pyrite mineralisation in the lower dacite volcanics, and Cu-Zn mineralisation in the upper breccia and sedimentary rocks. Dominant sulphide mineralisation is pyrite, chalcopyrite and sphalerite, as a stratabound Cu-Zn rich massive lense, underlain with a Cu rich stringer zone. The lens strikes east-west, 2 to 20 metres thick, locally up to 50 metres thick, dips 50 degrees north, goes down 400 metres, while the stringer zone is 2 to 50 metres thick.

Pyrite dominates, with zinc as pale brown, iron poor sphalerite, as fine grained disseminations, but often concentrated with the pyrite.

The deposit is offset by a north-west to south-east fault which separates the orebody into east and west lenses.

The underlying stringer zone is composed of volcanic rocks strongly altered to chlorite, sericite, carbonate, pyrite and quartz, with network veins of pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite and sometimes barite. Chalcopyrite dominates as coarse disseminated and fracture infill.

In the lower parts of the deposit there is minor bornite, tennantite-tetrahedrite, the latter containing the bulk of the silver. Chalcocite occassionally occurs, and malachite is locally abundant. There are also minor amounts of fine grained galena in the zinc rich zones.

There is a mushroom shaped footwall alteration zone, which defines a pipe like mass of alteration between the Main and West Faults. The inner zone of the footwall is chlorite-quartz alteration with sericite-ankerite surrounding the chlorite zone. The inner portion of the hanging wall is quartz-chlorite and the outer is a carbonate assemblage.

300 metres east is the Bledisloe deposit of massive disseminated Cu-Zn.

Mineral List

21 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

Archean 2500 - 4000 Ma ID: 752176

Lalla Rookh Sandstone Age: Archean (2500 - 4000 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Lalla Rookh Sandstone Description: Coarse grained to pebbly sandstone and pebble conglomerate; minor siltstone and grey shale; metamorphosed Comments: sedimentary siliciclastic; argillaceous detrital sediment; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Sedimentary siliciclastic; argillaceous detrital sediment 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]

Paleoarchean 3200 - 3600 Ma ID: 3191854

Archean volcanic rocks Age: Paleoarchean (3200 - 3600 Ma) Comments: Pilbara Craton Lithology: Mafic-ultramafic volcanic 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