Large-scale basement mobilization endows the giant Carlin-type gold mineralization in the Youjiang Basin, South China: Insights from mercury isotopes

The metal source and genesis of hydrothermal mercury-rich gold metallogenic systems occurring far away from active continental margins remain puzzling. The Youjiang Basin of South China, where exists numerous Carlin-type gold deposits and some synmineralization hidden intrusions, is a natural laboratory to address this issue due to it was up to 1000 km inward from the active continental margins of South China when mineralization. Here, we use mass-independent fractionation of mercury isotope ratios (reported as ∆¹⁹⁹Hg), which is predominantly generated during Hg photochemical reactions on Earth’s surface and has superiority of isotopic inheritance during hydrothermal processes, to address the metal source of the Youjiang Carlin-type gold deposits. Ore-associated sulfides from seven representative deposits display negative to near-zero ∆¹⁹⁹Hg values (−0.29‰ to 0.04‰), which fall in between that of the regional Precambrian basement rocks (−0.21‰ to 0.06‰) and deep magmatic-hydrothermal systems (∼0‰), suggesting a binary mixing of Hg from these two sources. An isotope mixing model and mass balance calculations demonstrate that ∼1000 km³ of the basement rocks, which contributed to 86% of Hg budget, were leached and remobilized by magmatic-hydrothermal fluids and deep-circulating crustal fluids to endow the gold reserves of these deposits. Given that traditional S, Pb, C, and O isotopic data yielded indirect and ambiguous constraints on metal source due to their complex evolution processes and isotope fractionation during the fluids ascended. Our results, therefore, highlight the great advantage of using Hg isotope as a new tracer to understand metal sources of hydrothermal deposits.