Skarn

[Oakview2]

All about skarns

 

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[Rob in KS]

All about skarns

My eyes are glazed over LOL Not exactly light reading. OK, I get there is gold, bismuth, tellurium and arsenic. But what is a diorite-granodiorite plutons. It sounds like a sub-atomic particle. Dang I wish I knew more about geology. My friend's son is working on his masters in geology. He walked by the physics dept and somebody yelled

Geology's not a real science.

 

[Eu_citzen]

Skarn is a complicated bugger. It can look in a lot of different ways and contain a lot of different stuff.

diorite-granodiorite describes a rock composition, i.e what minerals a certain rock is made of.

Pluton is, to simplyfy it an old magma chamber. Usually fairly large, but still smaller then a batholith. (oh yeah, more fancy words!)
This picture below pretty much sums it up.
http://img.geocaching.com/cache/ec452994-19db-4bc7-8127-aca2f6d055db.jpg

 

[tamrock]

Sure thing Ec. At times a picture is like a thousand words. Most the copper mined in the SWUS region of Arizona & New Mexico is mined from a skarn formation. I spent some time at the last operating underground copper mine in New Mexico called the Cobre Mine and it's ore was mined in a skarn deposit. The mine was later acquired by Phelps Dodge that is now Freport Macmoran and they do most all their copper mining by the open pit method these days. No more going down there in hopes of snagging some cool looking mineral specimens anymore... I believe this rock I put in my garden was one I pulled from the Cobre mine?.

 

[Eu_citzen]

Nice specimen, tam!