Quantitative Identification of Metallogenic Epochs and Provinces: Application to Phanerozoic Porphyry Copper Deposits

摘要

The terms "metallogenic epoch" and "metallogenic province" have been widely used for many years, but are so poorly defined that most of Earth’s surface and geologic history has been designated a metallogenic feature of some sort. We propose defining metallogenic epoch and metallogenic province as those time intervals of Earth history and regions of Earth, respectively, which contain a significantly greater number of deposits or larger tonnage of a specific deposit type than would have resulted from average rates of mineralization that have occurred over Phanerozoic time. Here, we evaluate the application of this definition to porphyry copper deposits.