ALBERT

Description: Hosted in the Early Cretaceous bimodal tholeiite volcanic series of the Los Ranchos Formation, the Doña Amanda and Cerro Kiosko deposits in the Bayaguana district represent significant Au, Cu, and Ag resources in the Cordillera Oriental of the Dominican Republic. At Doña Amanda, a dense stockwork of quartz-sulfide veins is hosted by volcanic rocks with intense transitional phyllic-advanced argillic and silicic hydrothermal alteration assemblages, indicating a high-sulfidation environment. Wavy quartz veins with central sutures and rims of pyrite + enargite + molybdenite + fahlore (B veins) are cut by planar quartz-pyrite D veins. Primary fluid inclusions in quartz from B veins (Th: 160°–〉400°C; salinity: 7.9–16.4 wt % NaCl equiv) are interpreted as porphyry-type fluids. Inclusion fluids in quartz of quartz-pyrite veins (Th: 125°–175°C; salinity: 4.8–12.2 wt % NaCl equiv), quartz from silicic altered wall rocks (Th: 150°–175°C; salinity: 8.3–13.9 wt % NaCl equiv), and late, distal calcite veins (Th: 120°–160°C; salinity: 5.0–13.3 wt % NaCl equiv) indicate limited mixing with more dilute fluids and rule out mixing with fresh meteoric water. In Cerro Kiosko, a swarm of fault-controlled massive chalcopyrite + enargite + bornite + fahlore D veins and lodes are hosted by rocks with pervasive kaolinite alteration after sericite. 34 S values of vein sulfides from both deposits are all close to –2 and consistent with a predominance of magmatic sulfur and sulfide deposition from an oxidizing magmatic fluid. These data are consistent with a transitional environment between a deeper porphyry Cu(-Mo) and an overlying high-sulfidation epithermal deposit. An Re-Os age (112.6 ± 0.4 Ma) for molybdenite from the Doña Amanda deposit places the porphyry-epithermal mineralization as Early Cretaceous, coeval with the Los Ranchos Formation host rocks and with the Pueblo Viejo deposit. New sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe U-Pb ages on zircons from plagioclase-phyric rhyolite domes in the Bayaguana district are consistent with porphyry–high-sulfidation epithermal mineralization occurring along the Los Ranchos Formation during tonalite batholith emplacement in the basaltic island-arc basement at ca. 118 to 112 Ma and finalization of felsic volcanism at ca. 110 to 107 Ma.