U-Pb zircon data and ages for bedrock samples from the Richardson mining district, Big Delta Quadrangle, Alaska

Abstract

During the 2017 and 2018 field seasons, geologists from the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys (DGGS) conducted geologic mapping and sampling in the Richardson mining district southeast of Fairbanks, including parts of the Big Delta B-4, B-5, B-6, and C-6 quadrangles. The project area has produced approximately 122,000 ounces of gold, mostly from placer mines, and includes the Uncle Sam, Montecristo, Richardson, Tower, and Hilltop lode gold exploration properties. The goal of DGGS s work in this area is to conduct a mineral-resource assessment and to build an improved understanding of the area s geology and controls on gold mineralization to facilitate industry exploration targeting. Uranium-lead (U-Pb) zircon geochronology results presented in this report show that similarly textured quartz-feldspar porphyry intrusions in the project area were generated by both Paleocene (56.8 +/- 0.9 Ma; 18WCW149) and middle Cretaceous (92.0 +/- 0.7 Ma; 18AW002, known as the Democrat Dike) magmatic episodes. The ages of medium-grained plutonic rocks at Birch Lake (92.4 +/- 0.6 Ma; 18ET587) and Gold Run (93.7 +/- 0.7 Ma; 18ET580) lie within error of the age of the hypabyssal Democrat Dike, indicating that the present-day depth of exposure juxtaposes rocks that were buried at widely different crustal depths during the middle Cretaceous. Phaneritic granodiorite near the Democrat prospect yielded a zircon age of 110.7 +/- 1.3 Ma (18RN565), extending the magmatic history of the prospect into the Early Cretaceous. Amphibolite-facies augen orthogneiss yielded a Late Devonian zircon age of 364.5 +/- 6.0 Ma (18ET040), consistent with similar rocks in the Lake George assemblage. Detrital zircons analyzed from siliciclastic schist along the Richardson Highway (18AW021) contain prominent age populations at 1.8 and 2.6 Ga, consistent with a Laurentian cratonic source and consistent with other results from parautochthonous North America. Pelitic schist from the Hilltop prospect (18TJN372) yielded a relatively small number (n=32) of zircon grains that define small age populations between ca. 1.7 and 1.5 Ga. All components of this data release are available on the DGGS website: http://doi.org/10.14509/30555.