Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T14:24:50.386Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Zinc-manganese carbonates from Broken Hill, New South Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

W. D. Birch*
Affiliation:
Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, Museum of Victoria, 285-321 Russell Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia

Abstract

Specimens of honey-brown to pinkish-brown globular carbonates encrusting concretionary goethite–coronadite from the oxidized zone at Broken Hill, New South Wales, have compositions in the rhodochrosite–smithsonite series. This may be the first extensive natural occurrence of this solid-solution series. Growth of the carbonates occurred in zones which have near uniform composition. The ratio MnCO3/(MnCO3 + ZnCO3) for each zone bears a linear relationship to the measured d spacing for the 104 X-ray reflections. Because cerussite is the only other mineral associated with the Zn-Mn carbonates and because of an absence of detailed locality information, the paragenetic significance of these minerals cannot be determined. The solutions depositing them may have been derived from the near-surface equivalents of the Zinc Lode horizons.

Type
Mineral Chemistry
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Birch, W.D. (1983) Zincian dolomite from Broken Hill, New South Wales. J. geol. Soc. Austral. 30, 85-7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, J.R. (1983) Phase relations of rhombohedral carbonates. In Carbonates: mineralogy and chemistry (R. J. Reeder, ed.). Reviews in Mineralogy,11, Mineralogical Society of America, 49-76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reeder, R.J. (1983) Crystal chemistry of the rhombohedral carbonates. Ibid. 1-47.Google Scholar
Smith, G. (1926) A contribution to the mineralogy of New South Wales. Geol. Surv. N.S.W. Mineral. Res. 34, 145.pp.Google Scholar