Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Science

Program

Geology

Supervisor

Dr. Robert Linnen

Abstract

The Young-Davidson mine is a syenite-hosted orogenic gold deposit at the western end of the Cadillac-Larder-Lake deformation zone in the southern Abitibi greenstone belt, Canada. This study utilized oxygen isotopes to assess the sources of the fluids and evaluate the role of magmatic and metamorphic fluids in gold mineralization. XRD analyses completed on whole-rock powder samples combined with petrography provides a better understanding of the distribution, timing, and nature of alteration patterns and their relationship to gold mineralization.

Temperatures calculated from mineral separates oxygen isotope thermometry indicate the fluids ranged from approximately 322 ± 25° to 431 ± 30°C. The δ18O values for fluids in equilibrium with these mineral at these temperatures range from 6.6 ± 0.2 to11.8 ± 0.3 ‰. It can be concluded that there are multiple stages of gold mineralization at Young-Davidson and the formational model is proposed as a mixed magmatic-metamorphic hydrothermal model.

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Geology Commons

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