Formation of the giant Cretaceous Jiaodong-type orogenic gold province of the North China Craton: A consequence of lithospheric multi-layer reworking

Abstract

The Cretaceous gold deposits along the margins of the North China Craton (NCC), which formed in a cra-ton destruction setting, display geological characteristics similar to traditional orogenic gold deposits typically associated with accretionary orogeny. These deposits, known as Jiaodong-type gold deposits, have attracted considerable attention. However, the lithospheric controls and formation mechanisms of these deposits remain unclear, as they cannot be fully explained by the supracrustal metamorphic genetic model commonly applied to classic orogenic gold deposits. In this study, the compiled S-Hg-Pb isotope ratios of gold deposits on different NCC margins display compatible variations to the Sr-Nd-Hg isotope ratios of mafic dikes spatial-temporally associated with the deposits. This implies that mantle lithosphere, metasomatized by variable proportions of oceanic and continental crust, was the source for both gold deposits and mafic dikes. Increase of oxygen fugacity and zircon εHf(t) from pre- to syn-gold granites suggests continuous basic magma underplating, which could induce concentrations of Au-rich sulfides and contribute additional Au to auriferous CO₂-rich fluids derived from metasomatized mantle lithosphere and basic magma. Localization of gold deposits was controlled by craton-margin sinistral shearing induced by clockwise rotation of the craton coincident with distal emplacement of metamorphic core complexes. Thus, the Cretaceous Jiaodong-type orogenic gold deposits were derived from fertilized mantle lithosphere through such crust-mantle processes within a lithosphere thinning background.

Keywords

Jiaodong-type orogenic gold deposit / Cretaceous tectonism / North China Craton / Isotope geochemistry / Metasomatized mantle lithosphere / Ore-controlling structures

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qingfei Wang: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Hesen Zhao: Writing - original draft, Visualiza-tion, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Lin Yang: Writ-ing - original draft, Visualization, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation. David I. Groves: Writing - review & edit-ing, Validation, Methodology, Formal analysis. Jilong Han: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Kunfeng Qiu: Resources, Investigation, Conceptualiza-tion. Dapeng Li: Resources, Investigation, Conceptualization. Zhao Liu: Visualization, Investigation, Data curation. Rui Zhao: Visual-ization, Investigation, Data curation. Jun Deng: Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The first author who is also the corresponding author of this paper, Qingfei Wang is an Associate Editor of this Journal, and was not involved in the edito-rial review or the decision to publish this article.

Acknowledgements

This paper is jointly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42125203, 42330809) and the 111 project of the Ministry of Science and Technology (BP0719021).

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102047.

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