Stratigraphic, structural, and tectonic setting of an Upper Devonian-Mississippian volcanic-sedimentary sequence and association base metal deposits in the Pelly Mountains, southeastern Yukon Territory

James Kenneth Mortensen
1979
The central Pelly Mountains in southeastern Yukon Territory consist of imbricate thrust sheets, which have undergone syn- and post-thrusting deformation and metamorphism. The local geology is further complicated by intrusion of Upper Cretaceous batholiths, and by strike-slip faulting related to the Tintina Fault, a major northwest-trending transcurrent fault of uppermost Cretaceous or early Tertiary age. This faulting disrupts the northeast edge of the study area. Upper Devonian and
more » ... n strata are present in at least two of the thrust sheets, but the Mississippian volcanic rocks occur in only one of them. The volcanic rocks consist of volcaniclastic material with minor interbedded flows, and were deposited in a submarine environment. Several coeval and cogenetic syenite and trachyte domes and small stocks are the remains of vent areas. Although the volcanic rocks are all highly altered and show evidence of widespread chemical mobility, trace element data indicate that the rocks are meta-luminous trachytes, most closely resembling peralkaline volcanics generated in extensional environments. This suggestion of a predominantly extensional tectonic setting in mid-Mississippian time in the Pelly Mountains is consistent with recent tectonic syntheses for the area. Stratabound and stratiform massive base metal sulphide deposits that occur within the Mississippian volcanic sequence are similar in many respects to the Kuroko-type volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits of Japan. The Pelly Mountains deposits, however, are among the first known occurrences in the world of Kuroko-type mineralization in a rift environment.
doi:10.14288/1.0052520 fatcat:cd42rx3vbnd6hhqpujkblopkvy