The new achievements and main progress in regional geological exploration and mineral resources survey of Karaqi area, Xinjiang

This paper presents a brief overview of the latest achievements and major progress in the regional geological exploration and mineral resources survey of Karaqi area, which has been the first regional geological exploring and mineral surveying project since the transformation of the army's task. This project party established a new formation named Karaqi Formation comprising deepwater slope facies of carbonate platform between Late Carboniferous and Early Permian. The authors discovered four fusulinids belts and one coral combination in Carboniferous-Permian strata and one graptolite assemblage zone in Silurian strata. Paleokarst breccia layer was found for the first time in Biegentawu Formation and deepwater gravity flow deposits were detected in Karaqi Formation. Two parallel unconformities were recognized: one is in Devonian-Carboniferous, and the other is in Ordovician-Silurian. Three structural layers were detected on the basis of unconformable surface and two regional fold structures were recognized. Six regional magnetic fields and four high magnetic anomalies were delineated. In addition, the authors checked and interpreted these findings. 14 stream sediment integrated anomalies were delineated. The Dliner digital finishing platform was developed for the digital mapping system.