Geology and mineralisation in the southern McArthur region and Mt Isa Inlier

P.N. Southgate¹; N.L. Neumann¹; P.A. Polito^2
1Geoscience Australia
²Anglo American, PO Box 1067, Bentley WA 6983

• Introduction
• Download the complete presentation
• Related links

Introduction

The Mt Isa Inlier and southern McArthur basin are, arguably, the most extensively studied and best understood Palaeo- to Mesoproterozoic terranes in Australia, and possibly the world. These rocks host one of the world's largest base metal repositories. The McArthur - Mt Isa - Cloncurry mineral belt contains several world class Zn-Pb-Ag, Cu, and Cu-Au deposits as well as hosting significant uranium resources.

Since 1995, Geoscience Australia, in combination with the Geological Surveys of Queensland and the Northern Territory, has implemented a series of integrated, multidisciplinary projects in the Mt Isa and southern McArthur regions with the aim of generating a chronostratigraphic understanding of basin evolution. The integration of detrital and magmatic U-Pb zircon SHIRMP geochronology with depositional facies and sequence stratigraphic analysis has allowed the development of a chronostratigraphic framework for the Leichhardt (~1800-1745 Ma), Calvert (~1730-1690 Ma) and Isa (~1670-1575 Ma) Superbasins of the Mt Isa and southern McArthur regions. The new event chart recognises three supersequences in the Leichhardt Superbasin, two supersequences in the Calvert Superbasin, and seven supersequences in the Isa Superbasin. Each of the supersequences is unconformity-bounded. In the Mt Isa region, times of increased magmatic activity broadly coincided with intervals of incision and gaps in the sedimentary rock record.

[back to top]

Download the complete presentation

Download the complete presentation (PDF, 1.4MB).

[back to top]

Related links

Evolution and metallogenesis of the North Australian Craton Conference Abstracts