Abstract
A set of more than 50 mineralised normal faults cuts lower greenschist facies rocks at the northeastern margin of the Otago Schist belt near Oturehua, central Otago. The faults strike northwest and dip steeply (>60°) northeast, and individual mineralised zones are traceable for up to 700 m along strike. The mineralised faults are closely associated with, and are generally parallel to, a swarm of northwest striking, steeply dipping extensional quartz ± ankerite veins (centimetre scale) that occur over an area of at least 25 km
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in the host schist. Mineralised faults contain 10-100 cm thick quartz veins that are traceable as interlinked structures for tens of metres along strike. Where faults cut massive quartz-feldspar-rich schist, the veins are planar, contain scattered sulfide minerals and visible gold, and there has been little alteration of essentially undeformed adjacent wall rock (centimetre scale). In contrast, muscovite-rich laminated schist host rock is extensively deformed and altered adjacent to mineralised faults (metre scale), with addition of quartz (silicification) and ankeritic replacement of metamorphic chlorite by kaolinite and/or sericitic muscovite. Veins adjacent to laminated (micaceous) schist contain abundant breccias with variably altered clasts. Widespread addition of auriferous sulfide minerals, mainly arsenopyrite, has occurred in the laminated schist alteration zones and breccias. The mineralised faults formed in the hinge of a northwest-trending post-metamorphic antiform, and the faults may have been localised by zones of weakness associated with kink folding in the hinge of the antiform. Hydrothermal fluids responsible for mineralisation were channelled by the normal faults. These faults developed by coalescence of extensional fractures in the schist rock mass during middle Cretaceous regional extensional unroofing of the Otago Schist belt. The location of these mineralised faults near the margin of the Otago Schist belt suggests a genetic relationship between mineralisation and the regional northwest-striking normal fault systems that cut and define the schist margin.