Discovery U Quarries, Mount Padbury Station, Meekatharra Shire, Western Australia, Australia
| Latitude & Longitude (WGS84): | 25° 49' 6'' South , 118° 5' 0'' East |
|---|---|
| Latitude & Longitude (decimal): | -25.81848,118.08346 |
| GeoHash: | G#: qe7vp5cu2 |
| Locality type: | Group of Quarries |
| KΓΆppen climate type: | BWh : Hot deserts climate |
In 2007, exploration company, Fairstar Resources, discovered an area of uranium mineralisation through investigation of two shire gravel quarries. These are approximately 10 kilometres south of the Mount Padbury homestead, along the Meekatharra-Mount Clere Road. Each pit is less than 50 metres from the road, one west and one east of it.
There is an extensive clover of alluvium masking the deposit at the surface. Around 1.5 metres below the surface is an area of calcrete, and under this radioactive biotite monzogranite. In the northern section of the deposit, the granite is intruded by east-west Proterozoic dykes.
The quarries are named by the company Discovery Pit 1, and Discovery Pit 2. In the quarries carnotite was discovered as bright yellow crusty fracture fillings, showing as thin coverings across rocks, and disseminations. The exploration company describes an extensive deposit far beyond the confines of the quarries.
The mineralised zone is calcrete, with carnotite encrusting black opaline silica and gypsum concretions, hosted beneath the 1.5 metre Wiluna Hardpan cover. The uranium zone is 1.5 to 2.5 metres thick at the location. Carnotite was the only uranium mineral found.
Mineral List
3 valid minerals.
Rock Types Recorded
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Alphabetical List Tree DiagramRegional Geology
This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.
Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org
| Quaternary 0 - 2.588 Ma ID: 888156 | colluvium 38491 Age: Pleistocene (0 - 2.588 Ma) Description: Colluvium and/or residual deposits, sheetwash, talus, scree; boulder, gravel, sand; may include minor alluvial or sand plain deposits, local calcrete and reworked laterite Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5] |
| Mesoarchean - Paleoarchean 2800 - 3600 Ma ID: 3192079 | Archean sedimentary rocks Age: Archean (2800 - 3600 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Narryer Complex Comments: Yilgarn Craton Lithology: Granitoid gneiss; orthogneiss Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154] |
Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
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