CASSITERITE U-Pb GEOCHRONOLOGY OF THE SANTA BÁRBARA TIN DISTRICT, RONDÔNIA TIN PROVINCE, BRAZIL
Frederico Sousa Guimarães, Rongqing Zhang, Bernd Lehmann, Alexandre Raphael Cabral, Francisco Javier Ríos
Abstract
Abstract The Mesoproterozoic Rondônia Tin Province of the Amazonian craton records a protracted history of about 600 m.y. of successive rare-metal granite intrusions and hosts the youngest known event of tin-granite emplacement of the craton—a rare-metal granite suite known as the Younger Granites of Rondônia intrusive suite. The ~1 Ga suite is currently interpreted as intracratonic magmatism resulting from a Grenvillian-age orogeny during the assembly of Rodinia. The Santa Bárbara massif is a tin-granite system of the Younger Granites of Rondônia intrusive suite that hosts Sn-Nb-Ta-W–bearing endogreisen and stockwork, as well as important placer deposits. The Santa Bárbara mine produces about 800 to 1,000 t Sn/year from placers and weathered greisen and represents about 20% of the tin mine output of the Rondônia Tin Province. Here, we report laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) cassiterite U-Pb ages of 989 ± 3 and 987 ± 6 Ma for the Santa Bárbara greisen and the cassiterite-quartz vein system, respectively. Alluvial cassiterite from placer mining has a U-Pb age of 995 ± 4 Ma, which is, within uncertainty, indistinguishable from those of primary cassiterite. These ages agree well with the previously published zircon and monazite U-Pb ages for the Santa Bárbara granite (978 ± 13 and 989 ± 13 Ma), which indicate a coeval relationship between hydrothermal tin mineralization and granite magmatism. The previously suggested 20- to 30-m.y. time span between granite magmatism and hydrothermal tin mineralization, which was based on mica K-Ar and Ar-Ar age data, is likely due to younger thermal disturbance of the isotopic systems.