LE3 .A278 2018

2018

Barr, Sandra

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Geology

Earth & Environmental Sciences

This study focuses on rock core from four vertical holes, each 50-m deep, drilled 50 m apart along a north-south transect in the Faribault Brook Formation near the Road 2 Showing by Globex Mining Enterprises Limited. The Road 2 Showing is one of at least 15 occurrences of sphalerite, chalcopyrite, galena, arsenopyrite, and/or native gold in the Faribault Brook Formation of western Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Core logging by visual inspection combined with measured magnetic susceptibilities, petrographic study, whole-rock and portable X-ray fluorescence chemical analyses enabled documentation of 6 different metamorphic rock types intruded by unmetamorphosed amygdaloidal basalt and flow-banded and spherulitic rhyolite sills. Broad correlation can be made between the holes, which consist of mainly metabasalt in the upper 30-35 m underlain by metawacke. The other metamorphic rock types are minor components that appear to occur randomly throughout the core. Like samples from surface outcrops of metabasic rocks in the Faribault Brook Formation reported in other studies the metabasalt shows chemical characteristics of normal mid-ocean ridge basalt erupted or intruded in association with turbiditic wacke and other sedimentary rocks in a back-arc basin. The unmetamorphosed basalt and rhyolite sills were intruded parallel to layering and foliation in the Faribault Brook Formation close to the Earth's surface after metamorphism and deformation. Basalt sills range in thickness from a few cm to 3 m and occur throughout the holes; the 3 m-thick rhyolite sill occurs near the bottom of only one hole. Their petrographic and chemical characteristics suggest that the sills are Late Devonian in age and related to the bimodal volcanic rocks of the Fisset Brook Formation,formed in a within-plate extensional tectonic setting.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:2684