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Mineral deposits in time: products and indicators of Earth's tectonic and environmental history

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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Although it has been known for several decades that some types of mineral deposits have episodic distributions through time, improved constraints on the ages of mineralisation and a better knowledge of Earth's history have improved our understanding of how metallogenesis is linked to Earth's tectonic and atmosphere/hydrosphere evolution. The temporal distribution of deposits reflects a combination of formation and preservation, with erosion removing older examples of deposits formed at shallow levels (<5 km) in the crust (e.g. porphyry copper deposits) from the geological record. The distributions of deposits that typically form in convergent margins have a close association with periods of supercraton/supercontinent assembly during Earth's history, and deposits that require the involvement of oxidised surficial or basinal fluids form only after the Great Oxidation Event. For some deposit classes, characteristics of deposits within the class also change with time. For volcanic-hosted massive sulfide deposits, the lithological make-up of the host packages, the geochemistry of associated volcanic rocks and the mineralogy of the ores and alteration assemblages change with time. These changes not only provide clues to changes in tectonic processes and environmental conditions over time, but also influence the physical properties and explorability of the deposits. Presented at the 14th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA) Quebec 2017

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Field Value
Title Mineral deposits in time: products and indicators of Earth's tectonic and environmental history
Language English
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/44e8845f-e67d-4d8e-aae8-310cd8d42cd3
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Mineral deposits in time: products and indicators of Earth's tectonic and environmental history". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/mineral-deposits-in-time-products-and-indicators-of-earths-tectonic-and-environmental-history