The upper Permian sedimentary facies and its role in the Dajing Cu-Sn Deposit, Linxi County, Inner Mongolia, China

Exhaustive investigations were launched for confirming the upper Permian host rocks of the Dajing Cu-Sn Deposit, probing into the possibility that Dajing is a Sedex type deposit during cosedimentation, complementing the deficiency of previous researches and going further into substantiating the role of the upper Permian strata in the control of ore distribution. After more than two years work, we reclassified the sedimentary facies in the Dajing area and its periphery as shallow fresh water lake and delta. Indicative sedimentary structures, such as ripple marks, rain marks, and mud cracks combined with contemporary fossils, were revealed. Having measured the flow directions, performed chemical comparison, and analyzed various sediments from sourceland in the Dajing area by XRF, we consequently redivided the strata into four sedimentary members, among which P2I1 and P2I2 were concluded as significant ore-hosted strata. The upper Permian basin was a lateral rift basin. The water and sediments in the basin are much deeper and thicker in the north than those in the south. The indicators of special sedimentary facies, such as gravity flow, brine pool and synchronogenic stratiform structure of the ore cannot be found in the Dajing area. There was no growth fault, assemblage of sulfide and sulfate, and no zonation as well. On the basis of study in this area, taking into account the paleosedimentary environment as capriciously flowing shallow lake, which approximated the state of oxidation, we figured that the paleogeography made it prohibitively difficult to form stratiform sulfide deposits which are prone to form in deoxidized environment, It can be ruled out the possibility that the Dajing deposit is a syngenetic deposit during sedimentation.