Ba-Rich Micas from the Franklin Marble, Lime Crest and Sterling Hill, New Jersey
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American Mineralogist, Volume 76, pages 1683-1693, I99I Ba-rich micas from the Franklin Marble, Lime Crest and Sterling Hill, New Jersey Rosenr J. Tn-lcv Department of Geological Sciences,Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg,Viryinia 24061, U.S.A. Ansrucr Compositionally unusual Ba-rich micas have been found in the Franklin Marble at the Lime Crest quarry and at Sterling Hill, both in New Jersey.At Lime Crest, coarsecalcite- dolomite marble is cut by very small veins containing green and colorless micas, albite, fluorite, pyrite, and chromian rutile. Large green muscovite flakes are superficially similar to comparable barian and chromian muscovite from Isua and Malene, West Greenland: BaO contents range up to 12 wto/o(about % of the A site), and CrrO, contents, though typically about I wto/0,can be as high as 4 wt0/0.Smaller muscovite grains in recrystallized marble on vein margins have the lowest Ba and highest Cr contents. Barian, fluorian phlogopite, also on vein margins, has about 3 wto/oof both BaO and F and very low total Fe. Formation of these Ba-, Cr-, and F-rich minerals is clearly related to vein formation, and vein-forming fluids were presumably the transport agentsfor the elements that are not typically concentratedin the marble. At Sterling Hill, Ba-rich biotite has beenfound in an augite-willemite-gahnite-sphalerite- calcite skarn. This biotite is bright orangein plane-polarizedlight and contains from 4 up to about 25 wto/oBaO. Changesin concentration of a number of other elementsare cor- related with Ba content. The micas highest in Ba are also high in total Fe and in Fe/Mg ratio, and qualify to be called anandite. They differ spectacularlyfrom previously reported anandite, however, in having about 7 rvto/oCl, and they are by far the most Cl-rich micas yet described. The Ba-rich micas also are higher than low-Ba micas in content of NiO (0.24 vs. 0. l0 wto/o)and MnO (2.3 vs. 1.7 wIo/o)but lower in content of ZnO (zl-5 vs. 8-9 fi0/o) and TiO, (0.7 vs. 1.5-2 wto/o).Although the whole barian mica compositional range can be seenin a single thin section, there is no textural evidence to indicate chronology of formation. A scenariohas been constructedin which isochemicalmetamorphism of the skarn protolith resulted in formation of Ba-rich sheetsilicates and sphaleriteas a result of thermal breakdown and reduction of hydrothermal barite in the presenceof hydrothermal Zn- and Mn-rich ore minerals, minor admixed detrital sediments,and pore fluids. Rapid depletion of the small reservoirs of Ba, Fe, and Cl apparently resulted in subsequent formation of biotite much poorer in Ba, Cl, and Fe. These micas appear to have survived a granulite-grademetamorphic peak, although they may have been reconstituted during cooling. INrnonucrroN The significant substitution of Ba into the interlayer sites of muscovite is quite rare but has been reported The replacementof univalent alkali metal cations (typ- from severalmetamorphic environments, as reviewed by ically K'*) by divalent alkaline earth cations in the inter- Guggenheim (1984). "Oellacherite" is an obsolete name layer cation sites of the micas is a well-known phenom- that was applied in the l9th century to Ba-bearingmus- enon. The substitution must of course also involve a covite (typicaly with up to 200/oof the interlayer site oc- coupled charge reduction in other sites, accomplished cupied by Ba), and pink barian muscovite was reported most commonly by replacing I4]Siwith tolAl, sometimes from Franklin, New Jersey,by Bauer and Berman (1933) referred to as the "plagioclase substitution" and ex- and further studiedby Dunn (1984).Dymek et al. (1983) pressedas the exchangevector Ca^ tarAl(Na,K)-,Si-,.The reported greenmuscovite with Ba and Cr from Isua, West typical replacementis by Ca, which yields the dioctahed- Greenland, that has similar Ba and Cr contents to that ral mica end-member margarite [CaAloSirOr0(OH)r]and from the Frankin Marble reported in this paper. I have the trioctahedral mica clintonite [CaMgrAlrSirO,o(OH)r]. not found other reports of barian muscovite. Superimposed upon these end-members can be other On the other hand, there are more numerous reports mica-group substitutions such as the Tschermak and Ti- and analyses of barian biotite from both igneous and Tschermak exchangesand the replacement of OH-' by metamorphic occurrences.Igneous occurrences of barian, F'orClt. titanian phlogopite have been reported from an alkaline 0003-004x/91/09 l 0-l 683$02.00 I 683 I 684 TRACY: BA-RICH MICAS Sclar, 1988). At both ore deposits and at the Lime Crest quarry about 6 miles away, pegmatite dikes have intrud- ed the coarse marble and created a variety of contact metasomatic mineral occurrences. The occurrenceof Ba-rich biotite in the skarn at the Sterling Hill mine and barian muscovite and fluorian phtogopite in veins at Lime Crest is problematic in the sensethat no definite sourcefor the Ba has yet been found in the vicinity. However, Ba-bearingminerals, including barite, barian feldspars,and barian micas, have long been known from the Franklin Furnaceand Sterling Hill mines (Frondel and Baum, 1974).There are no reported barite- bearing evaporite horizons in the Precambrian strati- graphic section in northern New Jersey,which includes abundant felsic and minor mafic gneissesas well as mar- Fig. l. Geologicsketch map of the Franklin-SterlingHill- ble, although such evaporites have been reported in Lime Crestarea in SussexCounty, northern New Jersey. Grenville rocks near the sulfide ores at Balmat-Edwards, New York (Lea and Dill, 1968). At Lime Crest, Ba has ultramafic plug in Montana (Wendlandt, 1977),nephelin- presumably been mobilized from an unidentified local ite from Oahu (Mansker et al., 1979), and Brazilian car- source, perhaps an evaporite, and transported by meta- bonatite (Gasparand Wyllie, 1982).Yoshii et al. (1973) morphic fluids. There are hints in the chemistry of the described and named the new metamorphic mineral ki- micas themselvesas to the nature of thesefluids, as will noshitalite, a barian, manganoananalogue of phlogopite. be discussed.At Sterling Hill, in the absenceof evidence Solie and Su (1987) describeda low-Mn, kinoshitalite- for synmetamorphic Ba metasomatism, a case can be like mineral from the Middle Fork plutonic complex, made for isochemical metamorphism of a protolith in Alaska. Both of these metamorphic barian biotite occur- which original hydrothermal minerals, including barite, rences are in calc-silicatesor marbles. Other metamor- were metamorphosed to form the present-day assem- phic calc-silicate occurrencesinclude barian phlogopite blage. in marble from Rogaland, Norway (Bol et al., 1989),and Ba,Mn phlogopite in ore skarn from Ltngban, Sweden BlrulN, CHRoMIAN MIcAs AT LrME Cnrsr (Frondel and Ito, 1968). Ba- and Fe-rich mica, called an- andite, has been reported from the type locality, Wila- Petrography and mineral chemishy gedera, Sri Lanka (Pattiaratchi et al., 1967), as well as The Lime Crest quarry is in an isolated lens of coarse from several other skarn localities cited by Guggenheim marble about 2 miles west of the main belt of Franklin (1984). The barian micas reported in the present paper Marble. On the northeast side of the quarry, near the span a range in composition from barian phlogopite to main accessroad to the quarry floor, severalthin greenish anandite. veins in coarse marble were exposed in the quarry wall In this paper, I present data on two barium mica oc- in 1983,when the sampleswere collected.In hand spec- currences (Fig. l): bright green barian, chromian mus- imen, the veins were only a few millimeters wide and covite and barian, fluorian phlogopite from a vein in the contained megascopicbright emerald green mica flakes, Frbnklin Marble in the Lime Crest quarry and micas with pale purple fluorite cubes,tan albite grains up to several a wide range of Ba contents from skarn interlayered with millimeters across,and pyrite crystals up to 0.5 cm. In ore in the Sterling Hill mine. The Franklin Marble is a thin section, the veins can be seen to consist mainly of Grenville-agecalcite-dolomite marble in New Jerseyand pale green muscovite and somewhat altered albite, with adjacent New York. Much of the unit is rather monoto- large euhedral crystalsup to 5 mm long of Cr-rich rutile. nous, coarse-grainedmarble, but locally it contains a re- The coarse calcite-dolomite marble is significantly re- markable array of minerals. Well over 300 oxide and sil- crystallized on the borders of the veins and contains iso- icate minerals, 33 not known to occur anywhere else, have lated small flakes offluorian phlogopite and ofgreen bar- been reported from the famous zinc ore deposits at ian, chromian muscovite that have compositions quite Franklin and Sterling Hill (seethe excellent summary in different from the larger muscovite crystals in the veins. Frondel and Baum, 1974). The nature of the protoliths Mineral analysesreported in this paper were all done of the ore deposits has been debated extensively for al- on ARL SEMQ and CamecaSX-50 electron microprobes most 150 years,but a new study (Johnson,1990) argues at VPI and SU. Operating conditions were l5-kV accel- persuasively for their origin as deep-seahydrothermal erating potential and l5-nA sample current on brass. brine deposits consisting of oxides, hydroxides, and hy- Standards included Amelia albite (Na,Al,Si), rutile (Ti), droxysilicates of Zn and Mn. The ore minerals and as- fayalite (Fe), norbergite (Mg,D, Benson orthoclase (K), sociatedcalc-silicates and skarns apparently formed as a barian apatite (Ba,Cl), rhodonite (Mn), and Durango ap- result of granulite-grade metamorphism (Carvalho and atite (Ca). Raw data were corrected using ZAF conec- TRACY: Ba-RICH MICAS l 685 tions (Heinrich, 198I ).