| Sol Buckman (foreground) is pictured with Earth and Environmental Sci... Sol Buckman (foreground) is pictured with Earth and Environmental Sciences honours students Sarah Woodward and Alex Moffitt who accompanied him to China |
Geological tales from the Silk Road
25 Jun 2008 | Bernie Goldie
“Journey to the West. A monkey’s tale of the geology of the Silk Road” was the title of a recent address presented recently at UOW as part of the GeoQuEST and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences lunchtime seminar series.
Sol Buckman from Earth and Environmental Sciences spoke about the geological marvels of China. He has just returned from China where he was accompanied by two Honours students, Sarah Woodward and Alex Moffitt.
Central Asia contains the world’s largest, actively forming, intra-plate orogen, the Tian Shan, which has several peaks in excess of 7,000 metres.
Recent uplift has exposed old Palaeozoic subduction complex rocks which contain a rich variety of world-class mineral deposits. However, much of the region remains unexplored and underdeveloped in terms of its mineral wealth, Mr Buckman told those attending the seminar.
China is rapidly opening to foreign investment in the mining sector and there is great mineral exploration potential.
Mr Buckman said that Central Asia was of great geological/tectonic significance as it records a massive amount of continental growth between 600-250 million years ago, which also included numerous gold mineralising events associated with the formation and accretion of volcanic-arc complexes to the margins of older cratonic nuclei.
Younger mountain belts, such as the Himalayas, which formed in the past 30-40 million years during the collision of India with Asia, are an example of the processes that must have once operated in Central Asia, he said.
The overall project will initiate investigations as to the nature and timing of individual gold deposits formed within the Tian Shan, northwest China, by sampling ore and alteration zones and performing geochemical, isotopic and geochronological analyses.
Mr Buckman said it would also provide a good platform with which to approach mining companies for future external funding and develop links with institutes in China.
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