GEOCHEMISTRY AND SECONDARY ALTERATIONS OF MICROLITE FROM ELUVIAL DEPOSITS IN THE NUMBI MINING AREA, SOUTH KIVU, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Microlite and U-enriched microlite were found in eluvium close to highly weathered granitic pegmatites actively mined as a source of tantalum ore and situated within the ~1000–900 Ma old Kibara belt unit, Numbi mining area, South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two examined pegmatites differ in their mineral assemblages and in the degree of fractionation: in the Mungwe pegmatite (lepidolite subtype) cassiterite, microlite-group minerals (microlite, U-enriched microlite), columbite-group minerals (columbite–tantalite), wodginite, ferrotapiolite; at the Misumari II pegmatite (beryl-columbite subtype) microlite, cassiterite, columbite–tantalite, wodginite–ferrowodginite. Both pegmatites underwent deep tropical weathering; however, the degree of hydrothermal alteration of the (Nb,Ta)-oxide minerals is rather low. Fragments of primary microlite and U-enriched microlite (the latter present only at the Mungwe pegmatite) are mostly homogeneous and compositionally uniform; locally U-enriched microlite forms outer zones of the grains. Primary microlite from the lessfractionated Misumari II pegmatite is rather homogeneous and has Ta/(Ta+Nb)=0.74–0.94 and higher Ti=0.07–0.23 apfu at the B-site compared to the Mungwe pegmatite with similar Ta/(Ta+Nb)=0.82–0.88 and low Ti. Microlite from Misumari II has higher contents of almost all trace elements (including REE) except for Li, Sb, and Pb. Primary microlite from both sites has Ca/Na close to 1, low A-site vacancy, and high F. Uranium-enriched microlite shows 0.29 apfu U, moderate A-site vacancy, and lower concentrations of F. Alteration of the U-poor microlite is very limited compared to the U-enriched microlite where radiation damage disrupted the mineral structure prior to the alteration. The altered microlite is depleted in Na and F and has high vacancy at the A-site, but the B-site population is almost identical to that of the primary microlite, as are the U concentrations. Such a composition is typical for secondary low-T alterations related to weathering. We demonstrate that the combined results from Automated Mineralogy, Electron Microprobe Analysis, and LA-ICP-MS techniques (along with the specific alteration features) can be successfully used to prove the provenance of tantalum ore by comparison with other localities where microlite is a major Ta-bearing mineral.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".