Petrochemical Study on the Alkaline Gabbroic Host Rocks of Titaniferous Magnetite Deposits in Gonamsan, Yeoncheon-Gun, South Korea

고남산(古南山) 함(含)티탄자철광상(磁鐵鑛床)의 모암(母岩)인 알카리반려암질암의 암석화학적(岩石化學的) 연구(硏究)

The host rocks of titaniferous magnetite deposits in Gonamsan are alkaline gabbros, which are typical of undersaturated alkaline rocks in terms of the lack of normative quartz. According to field occurrences and petrographic features, these alkaline gabbros are divided into 3 rock types: coarse-grained and pegmatitic rock, medium-grained rock with equigranular texture, and layered cumulate rock. All these rocks mainly contain clinopyroxene(salite), plagioclase(An 43-66), pargasite, and ilmenite. The accessory minerals are apatite, sphene, quartz, and sometimes titaniferous magnetite. Pargasite, sphene, and quartz are considered to be secondary minerals formed by the reaction among clinopyroxene, plagioclase and Fe-Ti oxide at deuteric stage. Fe-Ti oxides generally occur as ilmenite in the alkaline rocks, and titaniferous magnetite in the ore deposits. Layered cumulate rocks are characterized by a recurrence of discontinuous thin mesolayer of clinopyroxene-pargasite within leucolayer mainly composed of plagioclase. Clinopyroxene is cumulus mineral whereas plagioclase, ilmenite and apatite occur as intercumulus minerals. According to the variation diagrams of oxide and trace element contents against the differentiation index, incompatible elements, such as Na, Ba and Sr, show positive correlations whereas compatible elements, such as Mg and Cr, show negative correlations. However some compatible elements, such as Co, Ni and V show irregular variations, reflecting relative cumulate status of cumulus and intercumulus minerals. On the de la Roche multicationic diagram, these alkaline gabbros are distributed along the differentiation curve of undersaturated alkaline series from alkaline basaltic composition through basanitic composition to tephritic composition. Layered cumulate rocks, which are distributed between basanitic composition and tephritic composition, reflect their cumulate character, slightly scattering away from the curve. The medium-grained rock shows higher contents in Ba, Sr and light rare earch elements than the coarse-grained and pegmatitic rock. The former shows two times higher contents of total rare earth elements than the latter, $while(La/Lu)_{cn}$ ratios maintain fairly constant values of 5.08~5.06 in these two rocks. This means that coarse-grained and pegmatitic rock, as compared with the medium-grained rock, was formed by the earlier differentiated magma but rare-earth element distribution pattern remained almost parallel during differentiation. From the data the above mentioned, these alkaline gabbros are considered to be comagmatic and to be formed by intrusions of differentiated magmas in its reservoir.