Geologic description
Southern Gravina Island is underlain by an assemblage of undivided Silurian or Ordovician metamorphosed bedded and intrusive rocks; a stock and associated dikes of Silurian trondhjemite that cuts the metamorphic assemblage; and a sequence of Upper Triassic carbonate, clastic, rhyolitic, and basaltic strata that unconformably overlies the older rocks (Berg, 1973, 1982; Berg and others, 1988). The rocks are complexly folded and are cut by high-angle faults and by low-angle thrust faults. In many places, the Triassic rhyolite and the rocks beneath it are permeated by microscopic particles of hydrothermal hematite, giving them a pink, purple, or red hue (Berg, 1973, p. 14).
Brooks (1902, p. 73) describes the Grenadier prospect as a mineralized shear or breccia zone at the contact of pegmatite with schist and greenstone. Maas and others' (1995, p. 227) description of the mineral deposits in the area north of Dall Bay probably applies in general to the Grenadier deposit. They report that chalcopyrite is associated with sheared, silicified zones, chiefly in trondhjemite. Small barite veins are also found in the area. About 0.6 mile north of Dall Bay, chalcopyrite occurs as clasts or pods in a siderite-hematite matrix in altered trondhjemite. The Grenadier prospect is near the intersection of high-angle, NE- and NW-striking faults that juxtapose trondhjemite and metavolcanic rocks (Maas and others, 1995, fig. 58). The characteristics and setting of the deposits suggest that they mainly are polymetallic veins of Late Triassic or younger age. |
