KUPFERSCHIEFER UPPER PERMIAN BLACK SHALE - HOT HYDROTHERMAL HIGH ENERGY GENESIS AND GEOMETALLURGY AT THE SOUTHERN RIM OF THE KUPFERSCHIEFER SEA

Age dates from the mines at Sangerhausen, Germany, to Lubin, Poland, vary between 257 and 212 m.y. with a consensus date in the literature at around 252 m.y. These Re-Os ages were determined on the high grade polymetallic Cu-Ag-Au-PGM-Kerogen rich black shale mineralization of the deposits at the southern rim of the upper Permian Kupferschiefer sea. Recent exploration and research at the Spremberg, Germany, deposit has revealed the metallic and hydrocarbon mineralization to be of hot hydrothermal high energy origin with depositional temperatures maybe considerably higher than 350 degrees C. Chemical mud and chalcocite, bornite, digenite and chalcopyrite mineralization was deposited in layers at the bottom of the Kupferschiefer sea in seeps and mounds of the recent “black smoker” type with observable feeders and vein-like crosscuts. Micro-mapping, geochmical analysis, sulfur isotope, microscopic, microprobe, Raman spectroscopic, 3-D seismic research and hydrocarbon tests support the interpretation of a genesis rooted in deep reaching basement lineaments whose metal and hydrocarbon muds and fluids were deposited on top of the upper Permian Rotliegend sandstones as geometallurgic composites originating from the mantle and lower crust. Thus, at the Permian-Triassic timeline a vast ocean of maybe 600,000 sqkm. was dominated for maybe 10,000 years by sulphur-acid-saline brines that might have been hostile to life and living organisms through temperature and composition and contributed to the geologic Permian-Triassic extinctive development over a very large area.

References: Bechtel and Hoefs (2001); Blundell, Oszczepalski, Kucha (2003), Bubnoff (1950); Georgiev and Stein (2011); Spieth and Kopp (2012), Spieth (2017) Ph.D.Thesis