Combination characteristics of natural heavy minerals in barite deposits and their implications for ore exploration

Based on natural heavy minerals data, the authors mainly studied statistics of frequencies of occurrence of natural heavy minerals from different types of typical barite deposits. The results show that two major barite deposit types have representative natural heavy minerals, i.e., barite + pyrite + limonite in sedimentary type deposits and barite + lead group minerals + chalcopyrite + fluorite + pyrite + sphalerite + stibnite + malachite in hydrothermal vein type deposits. Further interpretations were made based on these results, which can provide important geological information for the study of ore genesis and exploration.