OREAS 53Pb

Reference material OREAS 53Pb is one of four new porphyry copper-gold standards prepared from ore and waste rock samples from a porphyry copper-gold deposit in central western New South Wales, Australia.
Mineralisation in the region is hosted by a sequence of late Ordovician to Early Silurian volcanics, intrusives and sediments that occur within the Bogan Gate Synclinorial Zone of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The western portion of this zone is dominated by volcanics and host to the Goonumbla porphyry copper-gold deposits. Copper-gold mineralisation occurs as stockwork quartz veins and disseminations associated with potassic alteration. This alteration is intimately associated spatially and temporally with the small finger-like quartz monzonite porphyries that intrude the Goonumbla Volcanics. Sulphides are zoned laterally from the centres of mineralisation. The central portions are bornite-rich with minor chalcopyrite, zoning outward through equal concentrations of bornite and chalcopyrite, to an outermost chalcopyrite-rich zone. Pyrite increases outward at the expense of bornite.