The Teutonic Bore deposit,Western Australia: a lead isotope study of an ore and its gossan

The Teutonic Bore deposit occurs in an Archaean greenstone belt within the Eastern Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Block in Western Australia. The ore is hosted by basaltic rocks and consists of a conformable massive sulfide lens underlain by a thick zone of pyritic stringer ore. The zone of oxidation reaches a depth of 90–100 m with the development of secondary copper sulfides. The lead isotopic compositions of six samples of massive sulfide, three mineral separates from the ore and eight gossan samples collected from the open cut were determined by standard mass-spectrometric techniques. Four of the massive sulfide samples, all three mineral separates and seven of the eight gossan samples have lead isotopic compositions identical to each other, within experimental error. These results confirm the findings of earlier studies that the lead isotopic signature of a massive sulfide ore is transferred to its gossan, and provide additional data suggesting the usefulness of lead isotopic determinations in ore prospect evaluation. The Teutonic Bore leads plot below the average global lead evolution curves for the uranogenic isotopes ²⁰⁶Pb and ²⁰⁷Pb, suggesting that the lead in the ore contains a significant mantle component. This feature of the isotopic data is consistent with the idea of a mantle plume origin of the Eastern Goldfields greenstone belts.