Craton

This is in part because denudation rates are very low and because sea-level fluctuation may be important to the erosion process. Cratons seem to undergo major episodes of erosion following drops of sea level. When the level drops to a stable stand of several million years, much of the landscape is eroded down to the new level and an erosion surface or a planation surface forms. 

Sloss, L. L. (1963). Sequences on the cratonic interior of North America. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 74,93-114. 

Sloss, L. L. and Speed, R. C. (1974). Relationships of cratonic and continental-margin tectonic episodes. In "Tectonics and Sedimentation" (W. R. Dickenson, ed.), pp. 98-119. Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Tulsa, Oklahoma, SEPM Special Publication 22. 

Elliott, C.G. 1996. Phanerozoic deformation in the stable craton, Manitoba, Canada. Geology, 24, 909-912. 

The Archaean Yilgarn Craton is composed mainly of granite, with mafic, volcanic and sedimentary greenstone rocks. It is one of the world s principal mineral provinces, with considerable resources of primary and supergene Au, sulfide-hosted and lateritic nickel, bauxite, as well as a wide range of other commodities. 

Gray, D.J. 2001. Hydrogeochemistry in the Yilgarn Craton. Geochemistry Exploration, Environment, Analysis, 1, 253-264. 

Gray D.J. Noble R.R.P. 2007. Nickel hydrogeochemistry of the NE Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia. CSIRO Division of Exploration and Mining Restricted Report P2006/524. CRC LEME Open File Report 243R, 133 p. 

Cornelius, M., Robertson, I.D.M., Cornelius, A.J., Morris, P.A. 2008. Geochemical mapping of the deeply weathered western Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia, using laterite geochemistry. Geochemistry ... 

America, the Birth of a Craton Early Proterozoic Assembly and Growth of Laurentia. Annual Reviews in Earth and Planetary Science, 16, 543-603. 

Gawler Craton, located on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert (GVD). In this part of the GVD, regolith landforms are comprised of scarce hills of weathered bedrock outcrops surrounded by sand spreads, dunes and colluvial materials the hills act as windows to the otherwise covered weathered bedrock. The outcrops themselves have been silicified and, more recently, have been overprinted with calcrete. Calcrete sampling is relatively easy on the exposed outcrops and is preferentially sampled by mineral explorers due to its near-surface location (<10-20 cm depth). However, calcrete on the colluvial slopes and in the swales is not as easily located because of concealment by GVD sand and colluvium. 

Figure 18. Orinoco River tributary Li isotope data (Huh et al. 2001). Tie lines connect samples pairs of dissolved (open symbol) and suspended load (filled symbol) for tributaries draining the Andes (circle) and those draining cratonic area (triangle). Isotopic compositions of suspended loads were similar in both cases, but the dissolved loads of Andes drainages were uniformly isotopically heavier. This difference was attributed not to lithology in the headwaters, but to transport- versus reaction-limited weathering conditions.

Johnson CM, Skulan JL, Beard BL, Sun H, Nealson KH, Braterman PS (2002) Isotopic fractionation between Pe(III) and Ee(II) in aqueous solutions. Earth Planet Sci Lett 195 141-153 Johnson CM, Beard BL, Beukes NJ, Klein C, O Leary JM (2003) Ancient geochemical cycling in the Earth as inferred from Ee isotope studies of banded iron formations from the Transvaal Craton. Contrib Mineral Petrol 144 523-547... 

The Hackett River VMS deposits are hosted within the Ignerit Formation and are part Yellowknife Supergroup within the Slave Craton. The Ignerit Formation consists of highly silicified felsic volcanic rocks of calc-alkaline affinity that are intercalated with discontinuous lenses of calc-silicate that are interpreted to be tuffs... 

Sleeker, W. Hall, B. 2007 The Slave Craton Geologioal and Metallogenic... 

Abstract Mobile Au in soil has been postulated for many years. It has been used by the mineral exploration industry in areas of transported overburden as a vector towards buried deposits. Until now, the nature of this mobile Au has not been known or investigated. Soil samples from a colluvial area above the Bounty Deposit (Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia) investigated by analytical techniques including laser ablation inductively coupled mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and synchrotron x-ray fluorescence (SXRF) combined with X-ray absorption spectrometry (XAS) have allowed us to map the invisible Au in these soils and suggests that at least some of it occurs in an ionic form. 

Keywords gold, synchrotron XRF, mineral exploration, ionic gold, Yilgarn Craton... 

Soil samples were collected systematically down a 2 m deep colluvial soil profile located over Au mineralisation at the Bounty Gold Deposit (Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia), prior to mining. Bulk samples were analysed by ICP-AES, ICP-MS and XRD and further sub-sampled and analysed to ensure that they contained detectable Au prior to detailed analysis by LA-ICP-MS, SXRF and x-ray adsorption near edge spectrometry (XANES). 

Late Mesoproterozoic S-type Sargipali granite and tungsten-mineralization Singhbhum-Orissa craton, India... 

Keywords Singhbhum-Orissa craton, Singhbhum Group supracrustals, Peraluminous S-type granite, Geochemistry, Monazite age... 

Misra, S. 2006. Precambrian chrono-straigraphic growth of Singhbhum-Orissa craton, eastern Indian shield An alternative model. Journal Geological Society of India, 67, 356-378. 

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