My ore deposits class was never this straightforward. I was constantly overloaded with minutia and struggled to grasp the big picture. You are an excellent teacher!
Academic research, by it's very nature, seeks more and more detail for the chance to make a discovery that has not been covered by previous workers. Occasionally that pursuit makes spectacular discoveries in science, but we entrust those same people with training new geoscientists who need to understand the big picture before diving into the detail. Only a few of them are able to step back and remember what it was like to see a phase diagram for the first time.
Low sulphidation systems used to be thought of as a separate species, but it now appears that some of them are distal or evolved parts of the same fluid systems.
Thank you for the video. Your video is really helpful. I'm currently doing a research about High Sulfidation Epithermal deposit for my final assigment but I still can't determine which one is alunite and which one is pyrophyllite during my field mapping. I already took a lot of notes on how to describe and differentiate those 2 minerals from you video and I hope it'll be a very useful guide for me during my field work. Keep up the good work sir 😁
Learning the (ropes) Rocks> excellent, lots of scratching around for Iron Ore between M Anuong past Phonsavon M Kham and M Hiem! Chinese want that Iron ore it seems, just uploaded some GPS maps for Lao Sanxia Minerals (Rio Tinto) mining seems to be opening up here
Sericite is basically a bucket term for white micas formed by alteration. Most of them have crystals large enough to see some reflections in the sunlight with a handlens, particularly on freshly broken dry surfaces. Even the really fine grained ones have a silky appearance that is different to the dull waxy sheen of pyrophyllite.
Dear, could you share with me a clear image where the pyrophyllite and alunite, of advanced argillic, are observed, that is, when it does not look crystalline, please!
The sample at 2:24 in the video is typical of pyrophyllite without obvious crystals in advanced argillic alteration systems. Alunite almost always shows some crystal reflections even when it is an alteration mineral (like the examples at 1:16), but they are much finer grained than the infill alunite in veins.
I have a claim out in SW New Mexico. The old miners targeted white caliche-like patches to start the shafts. Are these hydrothermal or epithermal vents?
@@runnikcatti5997 OK, so the white patches are probably indicating acid groundwater leaching due to weathering of sulphide in the veins. Not original hydrothermal vents, but a good exploration indicator!
