| Abstract: | In western Tasmania, Precambrian sedimentary sequences form the basement for narrow trough accumulations of Eocambrian and younger sequences. The main trough, the meridional Dundas Trough, is flanked to the west by the Rocky Cape region of Precambrian rocks within which major, apparently stratiform, exhalative magnetite-pyrite deposits are intercalated with metabasaltic volcanics and ultramafic bodies.The Eocambrian-Cambrian troughs apparently developed during extension of Precambrian continental crust. Early shallow-water deposition includes thick dolomite units in some troughs. Deepening of the troughs was accompanied by turbidite sedimentation, with minor limestone, and submarine basaltic volcanism with associated minor disseminated native copper. Ultramafic and related igneous rocks were tectonically emplaced in some troughs during a mild compressional phase. They contain only minor platinoids, copper-nickel sulphides and asbestos, but are source rocks for Tertiary secondary deposits of platinoids, chromite and lateritic nickel.In the Dundas Trough, Eocambrian-Early Cambrian rocks are separated by an inferred erosional surface from structurally conformable overlying Middle to Late Cambrian fossiliferous turbidite sequences. The structural conformity continues through overlying Ordovician to Early Devonian terrestrial and shallow-marine stable shelf deposits.A considerable pile of probable Middle Cambrian felsic volcanics accumulated between the sedimentary deposits of the Dundas Trough and the Tyennan region of Precambrian rocks to the east. A lava-dominated belt within the volcanics hosts major volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits, including those of the exhalative type, which in the south are enriched in copper, gold and silver, whereas in the north they are rich in zine, lead, copper, gold and silver. Cambrian movements along faults near the margin of the Tyennan region resulted in erosion of the mineralized volcanics, locally exposing sub-volcanic granitoids. Above the local unconformities occur unmineralized volcaniclastic sequences that pass conformably into Ordovician to Early Devonian shelf deposits. Ordovician limestone locally hosts stratabound disseminated and veined base metal sulphide deposits.Pre-Middle Devonian rocks of western Tasmania differ, for most part, from those in the northeast where deeper marine turbidite quartz-wacke sequences were deposited during the Ordovician and Early Devonian.The Eocambrian to Early Devonian rocks of Tasmania were extensively deformed in the mid-Devonian. The Precambrian regions of western Tasmania behaved as relatively competent blocks controlling early fold patterns. In northeastern Tasmania, folding is of similar age but resulted from movements inconsistent with those affecting rocks of equivalent age in western Tasmania.The final metallogenic event is associated with high-level granitoid masses emplaced throughout Tasmania during the Middle to Late Devonian. In northeastern Tasmania, extensive I-type granodiorite and S-type granite, with alkali-feldspar granites, are associated with mainly endogranitic stanniferous grelsens and wolframite ± cassiterite vein deposits. In contrast, scheelite-bearing skarns and cassiterite stannite pyrrhotite carbonate replacement deposits are dominant in western Tasmania, associated mainly with S-type granites. Several argentiferous lead-zinc vein deposits occur in haloes around tin-tungsten deposits. A number of gold deposits are apparently associated with I-type granodiorite, but some have uncertain genesis.The contrasting regions of western and northeastern Tasmania have probably been brought together by lateral movement along an inferred fracture. Flat-lying, Late Carboniferous and younger deposits rest on the older rocks, and the only known post-Devonian primary mineralization is gold associated with Creta ceous syenite. |
