HOT HYDROTHERMAL METALLIC CU-AG-AU MINERALIZATION EVIDENCING VOLCANO-MAGMATIC ORIGIN OF THE PERMIAN KUPFERSCHIEFER IN GERMANY

Copper-silver-gold-polymetallic (Cd, Hg, Mo, Co, Ni, Cr, V, Sb, U, Cs, Re, Pb, Zn, PGE) rich mineralization is present in the deposits associated with the Kupferschiefer “copper” shale of the lowermost Zechstein Group of Late Permian age in central Germany and southwestern Poland. The mineralization transgresses the Upper Permian: the Weissliegend sandstone, the Kupferschiefer, the Zechstein dolostone, and the overlying carbonate and saline strata.

New research at the University Stuttgart, Germany, has shown that the sulfides and noble metals were contemporaneously deposited within a carbon, silica and illite rich strata in a shallow marine environment. The metallic minerals, often in a non-stochiometric composition, document the hot hydrothermal nature of the effusive long lasting event.

The copper rich black shale component of the Kupferschiefer sensu stricto is a small part of the mud-chemical, volcanic system that began with the Weissliegend silica extrudite complex as evidenced at the Rudna mine in Poland. The deep-seated nature of the Zechstein-Kupferschiefer-Weissliegend mud brine and mud volcanic system is manifested by exotic element chemistry (PGE, Co, Ni, Cr, and V) and exotic minerals such as talc, serpentine and clinochlore.

The hot hydrothermal volcanic brine mud slurries surfaced onto the shallow marine Zechstein paleaosurface adjacent to Weissliegend, silica extrudite, mud volcanoes. Regional scale mud volcanism from a deep source delivered hot hydrothermal high to low density brines to the Permo-Triassic unconformity during the Pangea breakup.