Search

The Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa is one of the best-preserved records of fluvial sedimentation on an Archaean continent. The basin hosts the worlds biggest gold resource in thin pebble beds, but the process for gold enrichment is debated. Mechanical accumulation of gold particles from flowing river water is the prevailing hypothesis, yet there is evidence for hydrothermal mobilization of gold by fluids invading the metasedimentary rocks after their burial. Earth's atmosphere three billion years ago was oxygen free, but already sustained some of the oldest microbial life on land. Here I use thermodynamic modelling and mass-balance calculations to show that these conditions could have led to the chemical transport and precipitation of gold in anoxic surface waters, reconciling the evidence for fluvial deposition with evidence for hydrothermal-like chemical reactions. I suggest that the release of sulphurous gases from large volcanic eruptions created acid rain that enabled the dissolution and transport of gold in surface waters as sulphur complexes. Precipitation of the richest gold deposits could have been triggered by chemical reduction of the dissolved gold onto organic material in shallow lakes and pools. I conclude that the Witwatersrand gold could have formed only during the Archaean, after the emergence of continental life but before the rise of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process responsible for the gold mineralization in the Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa, remains controversial; the debate is between a detrital placer enrichment in laterally extensive conglomerate layers, and hydrothermal introduction by metamorphic fluids long after sedimentation. While textural and geochronological data may be ambiguous, a first-order geological observation severely delimits the mechanism and timing of gold emplacement. The individual gold reefs are cut and displaced by numerous mafic dikes, which, based on geochemical data presented here, are feeders to flood basalts immediately overlying the Witwatersrand. The displacements preclude fracture-controlled fluid focusing over tens of kilometers along a single conglomerate horizon during or after regional metamorphism. Instead, basin-scale gold enrichment occurred during sedimentation or early diagenesis, well before local redistribution by metamorphic fluids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]