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7461387 
Journal Article 
Archean evaporites of the North China Craton: evidence on major and trace elements and S-isotope 
Yan, YH; Wu, Y 
2002 
18 
531-538 
Chinese 
There are some Archean evaporites in North China Craton. Up to now Chinese geologists have never paid attention to Archean evaporites. We have found some evaporites in Inner Mongolia and some trace of Archean evaporites at eastern Hebei Province. It is iron ore and related rocks in Qianlishan of Inner Mongolia. That would be resulted from Archean evaporites. The Qianlishan Iron Mine lies in western Inner Mongolia, China, tectonically in the north of the west Eldos fault belt, North China Craton. There are four dome anticlines in the mine area, which are composed of Archean metamorphic rocks called the Qianlishan Group. Archean rocks are widespread, whereas the cover rocks are scattered only somewhere. From the bottom to the top Qianlishan Group may be divided into four formations, namely, Siquanshan, Chganguole, Qianligou and Habuqigai. The Qianlishan granite intruded into the cores of the anticline domes and directly contacted with the Siquanshan Formation, which mainly contains amphibole plagiogneiss. There are also inclusions of the Siquanshan Formation in the granite. As an introduction we only give some sets of evidence to show the Qianlishan Iron Mine and related rocks belonging to evaporite. (1) Evidence on petrology and mineralogy. The Chaganguole Formation is an ore-bearing rock series, in which there are nine layers of iron ore; two of them are rich. The ore-bearing rock series consists mainly of diopsidite, diopside-magnetitite, and calcipyre. The calcipyre contains various accessory minerals in different layers, such as olivine, serpentine, diopside, chondrodite and phlogopite. In the ore-bearing series scapolite diopsidite is especially well developed. These rock assemblages are very similar to those of the South Yakutia Mine, Aldan Shield, Russia, which were studied and defined as evaporite by Russian geologists. Even the overlying rocks of the ore-bearing series are similar to Aldan's, too. They are gneisses and schists and have some thin layers and lenses of marble also. In these gneisses some cordierite-bearing meta-pelite is well developed. A kind of rare rock hyalophane-bearing gneiss was found in the ore-bearing series. (2) Evidence on petrochemistry, mineral chemistry, major and trace elements. The protolith of the ore-bearing rocks are determined using major elements by many methods. They were resulted from chemical sediments. The metapelites were determined as semi-saline water sediments by ploting trace elements Ba and Sr. And studies of petrochemistry and mineral chemistry indicate that the Qianlishan Group has many characters very similar to those of the south Yakutia Mine, Aldan Shield, Russia. It is well known that SO42-, CO32- and Cl- anion cluster in scapolite should and could be from evaporite. The assemblages of diopside + scapolite +/- magnetite show an evaporite origin for their protolith. The high content of Ba and the occurrence of hyalophane indicate that there was Ba2SO4 in the protolith rocks. Comparing the scapolite diopsidite of Inner Mongolia with those of Aldan shield and Madagascar - Australia shield, and Canadian shield shows that the scapolite-bearing rocks of Qianlishan Mine area should be resulted from evaporites, too. Diopsidite chemical composition and scapolite composition are similar to those of the Aldan's and south Australia's too. Of course there are some differences among these minerals and rocks of different areas. (3) Evidence on S-isotope. S-isotope fractionation in Archean is very small delta(34)S close to 0. The S-isotope of Qianlishan Group conforms to this feature. The a delta(34)S values of Qianlishan show a narrow range, -1.3parts per thousand to 5.7parts per thousand the mean value is 1.4parts per thousand for pyrite and an average value is 2.2parts per thousand for scapolite in Qianlishan Group. These data are very similar to those of other Archean evaporite in the world (e. g. North Pole and Barberton). This similarity has been taken as an evidence for the fact that Qianlishan Group should also be Archean evaporite. All the above evidences indicate that the ore-bearing rocks of the Qianlishan Group would be derived from metamorphosed Archean evaporite. 
North China craton; Archean evaporite; S-isotope