The ancients observed and collected rocks that fell from the sky. There are reports of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Japanese, and the natives of North America and other countries collecting them, using them for trade, and putting them in places of importance such as tombs. Modern-age research on such objects opened with the pioneering work of Howard and Bournon (Fig. 1.1).

Existing views on the tectonic evolution of the Central Asian orogenic belt (CAOB) are highly controversial and the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian stages of this evolution remain the most enigmatic. However, the views on the Paleozoic evolution of the CAOB crucially depend on these early stages, as different choices of the starting point lead to very dissimilar Paleozoic reconstructions. In this context numerous microcontinents with the Precambrian basement that are included in the mosaic structure of Kazakhstan, Tien Shan, Altai and Mongolia are of particular interest. We undertook a paleomagnetic, geochemical and geochronological study of the Neoproterozoic volcanics from one of these units — the Baydaric microcontinent in Central Mongolia. According to U–Pb (laser ablation) dating the age of the studied Dzabkhan Volcanics is about 770–805 Ma. Thermal demagnetization revealed that most of the studied samples retained a pre-tilting component, whose primary origin is supported by a conglomerate test. These new data, together with available geological information allow us to conclude that about 770–800 Ma ago the Baydaric domain was located at a latitude of 47 (+16/-12)° N and belonged to one of the following plates: India, South China, Tarim or Australia.

Many scientists traditionally believe that the ore (and not only ore) matter of most endogenous economic minerals comes directly from the mantle or through the mantle matter differentiation and invasion of differentiated magmas in the crust together with water fluids rising from Earth’s depth. However, this assumption is right only in part as the entire matter of the continental crust, including ore elements, had been indeed released in the past from the mantle along with the other rock-forming oxides. In substance, however, this assumption is the “path of least resistance” as it allows us to hide our lack of knowledge of the real mechanisms of local crust enrichment with trace elements in a “black box” of the mantle and to substitute one complex problem with another one, no less complex. Indeed, the entire complexity of the classical approach to explaining the formation causes of local ore and other trace element accumulations in Earth’s crust is in that the concentration of most of them in the mantle is disappearingly low, whereas in commercial deposits it is relatively high and reaches sometimes top-cut grade value. For instance, gold and uranium concentration in the present-day mantle is on the order of 10-9; mercury and thorium 10-8; silver, tantalum, tungsten, platinum and lead 10-7; lithium, niobium, molybdenum and tin 10-6, etc., whereas in commercial deposits the concentration of these rare elements may rise to fractions and even whole percentages. <...>

The Coastal Cordillera of Chile hosts several world-class FeOx CuAu deposits, including Candelaria, Mantos Blancos, Manto Verde, and El Soldado. Despite this comparatively little has been published on Chilean FeOx CuAu systems. This paper presents observations from two small Chilean FeOx CuAu deposits of Lower Cretaceous age; Panulcilio and Teresa de Colmo.

Panulcilio is a pseudo-stratiform FeOx CuAu / Skarn deposit located within the metamorphic aureole of a monzodioritic intrusive. Chalcopyrite, bornite, pyrite and pyrrhotite occur with calcic amphibole as disseminations and microveinlets in K-feldspar-albite-silica altered meta-andesites, magnetite-albite-scapolite rich mcta-andcsites and in overlying garnet skam.