Geological settings and characteristics of the Au-Cu metallogenic concentration area in the Baie Verte Peninsula, Newfoundland, Canada

The Baie Verte Peninsula possesses rich mineral resources and has long been the focus of mining and exploration for copper, gold, asbestos and other deposits. The regional stratigraphy and structure are the main factors that control the formation, development and superposition of the deposits. These diverse mineral resources are mostly hosted in Lower Ordovician submarine volcanic rocks of the Baie Verte oceanic tract (BVOT) along the Notre Dame subzone of the Dunnage zone, which include ophiolite suites generated in a suprasubduction zone environment and their volcanic cover sequences. The ophiolite sequences host asbestos in hydrothermally-altered ultramafic cumulate sections, VMS-style (volcanogenic massive sulfide style) copper ± gold mineralization in mafic and bimodal mafic-felsic volcanic sequences, and gold mineralization in hydrothermally altered mafic and ultramafic rocks. In contrast, the volcanic cover sequences of the ophiolites host epigenetic gold deposits associated with banded iron formation, whereas quartz vein type or related replacement deposits are mostly hosted in altered and deformed mafic rocks. The structural style and geometry across the peninsula are very complicated. In the east, the Betts Cove Complex is folded into a relatively simple, large-scale, doubly plunging NE-trending syncline, whereas in the west (along the Baie Verte line), similar ophiolite sequences and cover rocks are complexly folded and segmented by multiple generations of tightly spaced, NE-striking faults and shear zones.