Abstract More than 150 Moz of gold has been added in production and resources from Proterozoic deposits in the last ten years, and many Proterozoic basins are now considered high priority exploration targets. The bulk of Proterozoic gold is produced from lode gold and Cu-Au (U-REE-Ba-F) deposits which are found in northern Australia, South Dakota, West Africa, Canada, South Africa, Scandinavia, and Central America. Proterozoic lode gold deposits are restricted to late collisional stages in the development of Proterozoic orogenic belts. They appear to have a systematic sequence of events in common and occur in linear belts associated with regional ductile structures at, or near, the greenschist facies brittle-ductile transition. Gold occurs in a large variety of rock types and has a close spatial association with regional-scale domes, anticlines, strike-slip shear zones, duplex thrusts, and in some deposits, geochemically distinct granites. Deposit styles can be subdivided into several types, directly related to the host structure and to contrasts in host-rock competency and mineralogy. These deposits have fluids and geochemical associations that overlap those of Archean lode gold deposits. Proterozoic Cu-Au-(Fe) deposits formed in a broader range of crustal and tectonic environments and display a great variety of structural and host-rock controls and styles. It is evident in all districts where the timing relationships are known that these deposits have spatial and temporal relationships to granites. These deposits display a range of fault and shear zone controls and are commonly associated with regions of geometric complexity, structural intersections, or regionally anomalous structural orientations. There is considerable evidence of variable fluid chemistry in Cu-Au-(Fe) deposits. Districts are commonly characterized by regional metasomatism and alteration at both regional and deposit scale which is commonly intense. Fe oxide-Cu-Au environments tend to produce similar alteration assemblages in all aluminous rock types. The influence of magmas as sources of fluid and ore components appears to have been greater in at least some Cu-Au-(Fe) systems and the associated granitoids are typically oxidized and include both mafic and felsic varieties. Sodic alteration styles are commonly prevalent regionally; the larger ore systems in particular are hosted specifically within substantial bodies of rock that are depleted in Na and enriched in K-Fe-(H).

Abstract Iron oxide–Cu–Au (IOCG) deposits encompass a range of ore body shapes, including strata-bound replacement ores and hydrothermal breccias. We use the implicit method to make a detailed three-dimensional geological model of a strata-bound IOCG in the Cloncurry District, the E1 Group, to elucidate structural controls on mineralization. This model is compared with the nearby, world-class, Ernest Henry breccia-hosted IOCG deposit. Cu–Au mineralization in the E1 Group occurs as structurally controlled, mainly strata-bound, replacement bodies hosted in metasedimentary and metavolcaniclastic rocks intercalated with barren meta-andesite. Replacement bodies in the E1 Group conform to a series of NNW-plunging folds formed in regional D 2 during peak metamorphism. Folding was followed by local D 3 /regional D 4 shortening, which formed a dextral, transpressional Riedel brittle to ductile system along the regional Cloncurry Fault Zone. Modelling suggests that much of the Cu–Au mineralization is controlled by synthetic R structures associated with this Riedel system. The deformation sequence at Ernest Henry is comparable, but differences in host rock rheology, permeability and fluid pressure may explain the variation in ore body types and total Cu–Au resource between the two deposits. The results carry implications for other districts containing these styles of IOCG mineralization. Supplementary materials: Sup 1: Probability plots of assay data for modelled elements. Plots made in ioGAS software. Power transform applied to y -axes of all elements. Note that Fe, P and S do not follow normal/log-normal distributions. Sup 2: Summary statistics of assay data for modelled elements. A description of the rock type (lithology) codes used in the geological model are available in Sup 3. The 3D models presented in this paper are available as supplementary data online (Sup 4) and may be viewed in the free Leapfrog Viewer program, which can be downloaded from http://www.leapfrog3d.com/ . These supplementary files are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3729946