Tellurium-bearing minerals in zoned sulfide chimneys from Cu-Zn massive sulfide deposits of the Urals, Russia

Tellurium-bearing minerals are generally rare in chimney material from mafic and bimodal felsic volcanic hosted massive sulfide (VMS) deposits, but are abundant in chimneys of the Urals VMS deposits located within Silurian and Devonian bimodal mafic sequences. High physicochemical gradients during chimney growth result in a wide range of telluride and sulfoarsenide assemblages including a variety of Cu-Ag-Te-S and Ag-Pb-Bi-Te solid solution series and tellurium sulfosalts. A change in chimney types from Fe-Cu to Cu-Zn-Fe to Zn-Cu is accompanied by gradual replacement of abundant Fe-, Co, Bi-, and Pb- tellurides by Hg, Ag, Au-Ag telluride and galena-fahlore with native gold assemblages. Decreasing amounts of pyrite, both colloform and pseudomorphic after pyrrhotite, isocubanite ISS and chalcopyrite in the chimneys is coupled with increasing amounts of sphalerite, quatz, barite or talc contents. This trend represents a transition from low- to high sulphidation conditions, and it is observed across a range of the Urals deposits from bimodal mafic- to bimodal felsic-hosted types: Yaman-Kasy → Molodezhnoye → Uzelga → Valentorskoye → Oktyabrskoye → Alexandrinskoye → Tash-Tau → Jusa. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Wien.