Gold mineralization in the Cantung W-skarn deposit, Northwest Territories: an examination of distribution, mineralogy, and petrogenesis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Cantung mine is a world-class W-skarn deposit; it is located just east of the Yukon border in the Selwyn Mountain Range of the Northwest Territories. The deposit area is within the southern extent of the polymetallic Tintina Gold Belt, which has many notable intrusion-related Au deposits. The extensive W skarns at Cantung were developed by hydrothermal fluids that, based on earlier research, were determined to be predominately supercritical magmatic brines with homogenization temperatures ranging from 270-500°C. Mineralization is composed of calcic exoskarn replacement of a clean limestone and lower grade replacements in a calc- silicate/chert unit; these occur in both the operating open pit and underground mine (the E Zone). The main sulphide identified petrographically is pyrrhotite, which is abundant in all skarn facies. Scheelite and chalcopyrite are dominant and there is locally abundant sphalerite. Native Bi exhibits textures indicative of forming later than the silicate assemblage in the paragenetic sequence, and it is decorated by bismuthinite, Bi tellurides, Ag tellurides, and Bi selenides. Tungsten and Cu are the main mine products, but the Au potential of the deposit merits further investigation. This study characterized the distribution, mineralogy, and petrogenesis of Au mineralization by examining five skarn samples with bulk rock Au assay values >0.5 ppm taken from the E Zone. No free gold or electrum were identified petrographically or by SEM and FEG- SEM analyses. A positive correlation (Spearman's Rank, r') of Au with Bi (0.76), Ag (0.70), Fe (0.64), Cu (0.64), and Mo (0.60) was identified using the bulk rock geochemical data (n = 48). The strong correlation between Bi and Au is suggestive of a liquid bismuth collector mechanism for Au enrichment. However, LA ICP-MS analysis of native Bi and Bi alloys failed to reveal significant Au predicted by the liquid bismuth collector model. In contrast, the highest Au concentration was encountered in hessite (Ag2Te) and other tellurides. Nano-inclusions within chalcopyrite and silicate minerals were also investigated using FEGSEM for their Au content, but their composition consisted of native Bi. The decoration of native Bi by bismuthinite, Bi tellurides, Ag tellurides, and Bi selenides provides evidence for a late stage S-, Ag-, and Te-rich fluid. This fluid is thought to have remobilized the Au and deposited it as lattice bound invisible Au within the tellurides. This new data constrains Au exploration targets at Cantung to areas of altered skarn or where there is a presence of telluride minerals.
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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 | 0.002 | 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".