Sulfur isotope studies of the felbertal scheelite deposit,eastern alps

The Felbertal scheelite deposit is the largest known strata-bound tungsten concentration. It lies in an up to 400 m thick rock pile in the lowermost part of the volcanic rock sequence, probably of the Early Paleozoic Habach Formation. Both ore fields (eastern and western) have been affected by Variscan and Alpine metamorphism and tectonism, resulting in a remobilization of the ore mineralization. This ore deposit and the neighboring rocks show a strikingly low sulfur content. The eastern field with one major orebody has very little sulfide mineralization. The western field, with 8 orebodies (K1–K8) and two remobilized vein zones (S1 and S2), reveals somewhat more minor sulfide enrichments that are mainly within and around the K1 and K2 orebodies and in some parts of the interlayered schist sequence. Sulfur isotope compositions of 90 sulfide minerals (37 pyrrhotite, 20 chalcopyrite, 19 pyrite and 11 molybdenite and/or WS₂-MoS₂ solid solutions and 3 Pb-Bi sulfosalts, including 7 sulfides within scheelite grains) from 60 ore and host rock samples have been determined with a standard error of less than ±0.2 per mil. All data range from –3.6 to +4.3 ³⁴S. There are small differences in the sulfur isotope values from place to place and in time from the first and second to the third generation. In the western field, the K1 orebody differs from other orebodies (K2, K4, K7) due to isotopically heavier ³⁴S values. The three scheelite generations show differences in the ³⁴S values of the sulfide microphases within scheelite grains, from +1.0 to +4.3 per mil for the first and the second, and from –1.8 to –3.3 per mil for the third generation. Sulfide phases within molybdoscheelites may have crystallized under the same conditions as the other coeval sulfide minerals in the same orebody. They commonly formed later than scheelite. These changes may be explained using data from Ohmoto and Rye (1979): Small changes in temperature, pH, and/or may result in large changes in the ³⁴S values with the precipitation of isotopically heavier sulfides under more reducing conditions. Only four samples with sulfide mineral pairs show isotopic equilibrium. All others display some disequilibrium. We suggest that the sulfides in the ores and surrounding volcanogenic host rocks formed contemporaneously from the same hydrothermal ore fluids, and that the sulfur species in these fluids may have been dominantly H₂S.