Evolving the Genetic Model for the Cononish Gold Deposit, Scotland: From Prospect to Mine

The Cononish deposit consists of a complex of fault-hosted, near vertically dipping, gold- and base-metal-bearing quartz-carbonate veins. Situated near Tyndrum, 70km north of Glasgow, it is on course to become Scotland's first ever commercial gold mine. Extensive adit-mapping reveals two metallurgically distinct Au-bearing mineral assemblages that are spatially associated with discrete dilations along the Cononish fault. The first (X) constitutes much of the economic resource and is associated with: pyrite tellurides chalcopyrite-galena, coincident with a quartz calcite-sericite-barite gangue. The second (Y) is composed of oxide-pyrite-pyrrhotite chalcopyrite, coincident with a quartz-carbonate-chlorite gangue. Mineralogical contrast reflects a marked change in composition and oxidation state of ore-fluids. Whilst Cononish displays broad commonality with the orogenic group of ore deposits, mineralization is temporally coincident with high-K Ba-Sr enriched, talc-alkaline magmatism. This observation is substantiated by PS analyses of coincident pyrite (similar to 1.5 parts per thousand) and barite (similar to 23.7 parts per thousand) that mineralized at epithermal temperatures (similar to 223 degrees C), and geological observations in this study