ABSTRACT |
The Taysan batholith consists of
hornblende diorite to trondhjemite on a
calc-alkaline trend intruded into
pre-Jurassic schist on the northeast and
probably Cretaceous metavolcanics on the
south and west. The youngest dikes,
postmineral, were dated at 14.8 +/- 0.9
m.y., putting the intrusive sequence in
the middle Miocene, the same time frame
as nearly all of the Philippine
disseminated deposits. The area was
nearly peneplaned and in the Pleistocene
the whole of southern Luzon was
blanketed with volcanic ash, covering at
least 95 percent of the mineralized
zone.
A disseminated copper deposit formed at
the western edge of the batholith
seemingly on the margin of a volcanic
breccia pipe. It plunges about 33o to
the east northeast. The average copper
grade is 0.43 percent with significant
gold, a trace of molybdenum, and 2 to 3
percent each of magnetite and pyrite. A
late pulse of mineralization superposed
0.13 percent zinc in the upper portion
of the orebody.
Alteration is poorly exposed but an
outer propylitic zone with a strong
development of epidote and some calcite,
chlorite, and pyrite is present.
Representing a phyllic zone there is
very strong pyritization in some
portions of the fringe of the
mineralized zone, much weaker in others.
Soda sericite is strongly developed
outside the orebody and less so within
the ore zone, where silicification is
prominent. Potassic alteration is
represented by strong hydrothermal
development of biotite with weaker and
spotty orthoclase, the potassic zone
coinciding with strongest
mineralization.
Strontium 87Sr/ 86Sr
ratios in the Philippines are low in
porphyry
copper plutons ranging from 0.7035 to
0.7037, but at Taysan it is 0.7040.
|
| |