The significance of genetic mineralogical study in the development of placer prospecting

The natural heavy mineral survey is one of the effective means of mineral exploration. However, the natural heavy mineral survey in prospecting work has fallen into an embarrassing position in recent years. On the one hand, the natural heavy mineral prospecting relies on the natural erosion of orebody outcrops, whereas the prospecting work has been oriented to the search for concealed and deep orebodies with the development of mineral resources; on the other hand, the natural heavy mineral survey focused primarily on the amount of target minerals in the previous work, which is now in a relative inferior position compared with the method of geochemical survey, and tends to be gradually replaced by the latter method. Whether the natural heavy mineral survey can continue to play an important role in mineral exploration has become a serious problem, and hence this paper tries to discuss the development direction of natural heavy mineral prospecting in terms of genetic mineralogy.