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pnocessess
oF FoRMATtoN oF MTNERAL DEpostrs
silicate interstices like water out of a sponge has
aptly been termedfilter pressing.It could take place
only by mashing together the silicate crystals, but
even then some of thc residual liquid must remain.
The silicate crystals would show the effect of such
mashing in the form of broken corners and edges,
and strained, bent, cracked crystals, and undula-
tory extinction under the polarizing microscope.
This is
just
what is found in the crystals of plagio-
clase in many anorthosites where filter pressing is
thought to have taken place. Osborne has described
such effects of mashing in anorthosite rocks asso-
ciated with titaniferous magnetites in the Adiron-
dack region, which he considered had resulted from
filter pressing.
[n a large igneous body, however,
filter pressing would not be likely to yield large
concentrated bodies of oxides; rather there would
be numerous avenues of escape of the fluid oxides,
which would give rise to many smaller bodies of
oxides.
However, if a late gravitative liquid accumulation
were subject to pressure, the mobile liquid already
collected as a concentrated body could be forced
out en masse to a place of less pressure. tt might
be injected along the piimary strucrure of the al-
ready consolidated parent intrusive to give rise to
concordant bodies of oxides. More likely, it would
be injected across the primary structure giving dis-
cordant relations along the contact, or out into the
invaded rock along shear zones or fissures to form
a sill or a dike, such as the dike of Cumberlandite
(magnetite,
silicates, apatite) in Rhode Island. If a
high degree of purification had taken place before
injection, mineral bodies of high purity might result.
The injected nature of such deposits distinguishes
them from segregations. They exhibit the intrusive
rclations of normal igneous intrusives. The ore min-
erals surround, cut across, corrode, and react with
earlier-formed rock minerals. If the injected iron-
rich fluids are rich in volatiles, hydrothermal reac-
tions might be evident.
Some deposits of magnetite and ilmenite, which
were formerly called early segregations, are now
suggested to be of the late, gravitative, liquid injec-
tion type. This has been suggested for many of the
titanomagnetite deposits of the Adirondack region
of New York and the Allard Lake deposit. The
huge magnetite deposits of Kiruna, Sweden, with
its hundreds of million of tons of high-erade ore, is
probably an injection, even though it encloses frag-
ments of the country rock. Several recent studies,
however. have recognized that the banded nature
of the Kimna iron is not the result of magmatic
segregation but actually sedimentary layering re-
sulting from a submarine exhalative origin. In these
deposits, the ores and the composition of the rocks
above and below the ore indicates that the ores
were deposited in a volcanic-marine environment
suggesting a proposed classification of "Kiruna-
type exhalativc-sedimentary apatite iron ores." The
Kiruna-type magmatic injection genetic type may
be bettcr illustrated by southeast Missouri;. Ccrro
Mercado, Durango, Mexico; and Algarrobo, Chile,
depoSits. Somc geologists also consider that the
titanomagnetite deposits of lron Mountain, Wyo-
ming, are late magmatic injections. The hugc ilmen-
ite deposits of Allard [-ake,
Quebec,
exceeding 300
million tons of ore, intrude the enclosirig anorthos-
ite, cross the grain structure, and include blocks
and fragments of coarse anorthosite. This also ap-
pears to be a late magmatic injection into the parent
host rock. The chromite
"dike"
at La Coulee, New
Caledonia, looks like an injection, as do also some
of the Turkish chromite deposits. The chromite at
Dwars River Bridge in South Africa (Fig.
5.I) an-
gles across the grain of the rock and includcs frag-
ments of parent anorthosite. It migirt be a decanted
late magmatic accumulation. The platinum pipes of
South Africa, actually olivine rock containing min-
ute platinum, cut vertically across the pseudo-strat-
ification of the BIC for hundreds of meters. It is
difficult to escape the conclusion that thesc pipes
and accompanying dikes are late magmatic injec-
tions.
Irvine has suggested that fractional crysrqllip-
tion by itself cannot yield a concenrated deposit of
chromite once olivine or pyroxene or other silicates
have begun to form. If, however, siliceous material
is added to the magma on the olivine-chromite side
of the phase diagram, the composition would shift
to the chromite primary-phase field. It is possible
that if added silica content were provided from
granite melt derived, for example, from the roof of
the intrusion, chromite separation from thc magxna
might occur. This suggested process is substanti-
ated by an experimental study conducted by Irvine
at the Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory.
Residual Liquid Pegmatitic Injection. The formation
of pegmatites, mentioned in Chapter 4, results from
the injection of late magmatic fluids containing the
ingredients of the late rock-forming minerals, along
with much watert carbon dioxide, concentrations
of rare elements, mineralizers, and metals. Many
such pegmatites are valuable mineral deposits and
are mined for their industrial minerals and metals.
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