Accessory Minerals of the Korobkovskaya Formation Rocks in the Stoylo-Lebedinskiy Iron Ore Deposit of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly

The ferruginous quartzites and shales of the Korobkovskaya formation uncovered in the quarry of the Lebedinskiy and Stoylenskiy iron ore deposit of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly are the object of research in the present work. The rocks under study contain complex accessory minerals, such as apatite, sphalerite, rutile, ilmenite, garnets, zircon, olivine, orthopyroxene, barite, etc., and were first characterized using modern methods of substance study. Zircon, olivine, and orthopyroxene were described for the first time for the shales of the Korobkovskaya formation, and several varieties of these minerals were identified for the first time for garnets and zircons by their physical properties and chemical composition. Diverse sulfide-telluric-bismuth mineralization has been established in ferruginous quartzites. The established features of the composition of accessory minerals of shales allow us to characterize some peculiarities of sedimentation conditions of the studied rocks. Such a wide range of accessory minerals indicates the presence of rocks of different petrographic composition in the drift areas. The revealed differences in the species composition of accessory minerals in ferruginous quartzites and shales are caused by genetic features of the preceding sediments of the rocks of the Kursk series, and the similarity is explained by the influence of superimposed metamorphogenic-hydrothermal processes.

ferruginous quartzites, carbonaceous shales, Kursk Magnetic Anomaly, mineralogy, Precambrian