Phanerozoic Synthesis Project

• Project description
• Special projects
• Project outcome
• Project outputs
• Related links

Project description

The project will bring together and synthesise data and interpretation on aspects of the Australian Phanerozoic era from both external and internal data sources. It aims to use these data/interpretations to facilitate understanding at a continental scale of the geodynamics and tectonics operating during the period 600 - 0 Ma, in order to make predictions about the potential for undiscovered minerals systems.

The Australian Phanerozoic-era geological provinces host many significant ore deposits, e.g., lead-zinc (Pb-Zn), gold (Au), copper-gold (Cu-Au), tin (Sn), tungsten (W), molybdenum (Mo), uranium (U), zinc (Zn), titanium (Ti). Exploration within these regions has been strongly commodity focussed. Accordingly, individual regions vary from strongly explored 'brownfields' for certain commodities (and for specific exploration models), to frontier 'greenfields' for other commodities (and for exploration models based on new deposit-style models, e.g. intrusion-related gold). Understanding the tectonics and geodynamics of these regions and the metallogenic implications of those features therefore is fundamental to the prediction of the minerals systems and possible mineralisation which have not been considered previously.

The following regions are part of this project:

• Lachlan Orogen (Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales)
• New England Orogen (New South Wales, Queensland)
• Thomson Orogen (New South Wales, Queensland)
• North Queensland Orogen

Figure 1: Subdivision of the Tasmanides, image used courtesy of Dick Glen. View The Lachlan Orogen presentation.

The project aims to enhance the energy and mineral prospectivity for the Phanerozoic of eastern Australia via:

• Improved understanding of regional events/tectonic history and metallogenic implications;
• provision of intelligent metallogenic datasets (linked to National Maps);
• improved understanding of basement structure and craton boundaries;
• improved understanding of (largely undercover) Thompson Fold Belt; and
• improved geochronology of important energy and mineral deposits;

Special projects

• Sm-Nd isotope maps of northern and southern Eastern Australia;
• dating of selected minerals deposits of eastern Australia; and
• geochronology for sediment provenance studies - New England and Thompson Orogen sediments.

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Project outcome

Promote opportunities for investment in mineral exploration through new pre-competitive geoscience information from syntheses of Australia's Phanerozoic-era geological provinces with the desired outcome being to increase mineral exploration leading to the discovery of energy and mineral deposits in the Australian Phanerozoic-era geological provinces.

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Project outputs

• Reports on geodynamic synthesis, metallogeny and energy and mineral potential of the Phanerozoic (600-0 Ma) interval, for selected provinces and regions of Australia, delivered in a time-space framework;
• a presentation New insights into intrusion-related mineralisation in the Tasmanides
• a report on granite-related metallogenesis for Eastern Australia, with accompanying metallogenic granite and host rock datasets (and metadata), linked to Geoscience Australia's National Geological Maps digital geology; and
• an invited Keynote presentation for the Sixth International Hutton Symposium, (Stellenbosch, S. Africa, July, 2007), Three billion years of granite magmatism: Palaeo-Archaean to Permian granites of Australia.
• Summary
• Part 1 PDF 3MB
• Part 2 PDF 5MB
• Part 3 PDF 7MB

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Related links

• Felsic and Intermediate Igneous Rocks of Australia