Publication Date:
2009-02-07
Description:
Hydrothermal ore deposits form when metals, often as sulfides, precipitate in abundance from aqueous solutions in Earth's crust. Much of our knowledge of the fluids involved comes from studies of fluid inclusions trapped in silicates or carbonates that are believed to represent aliquots of the same solutions that precipitated the ores. We used laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to test this paradigm by analysis of fluid inclusions in sphalerite from two contrasting zinc-lead ore systems. Metal contents in these inclusions are up to two orders of magnitude greater than those in quartz-hosted inclusions and are much higher than previously thought, suggesting that ore formation is linked to influx of anomalously metal-rich fluids into systems dominated by barren fluids for much of their life.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Wilkinson, Jamie J -- Stoffell, Barry -- Wilkinson, Clara C -- Jeffries, Teresa E -- Appold, Martin S -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Feb 6;323(5915):764-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1164436.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK. j.wilkinson@imperial.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19197059" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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