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Peculiar Knob Iron Ore Mine, South Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Peculiar Knob Iron Ore Mine	Pit
South Australia	State
Australia	Country

An open pit iron ore (hematite) mine.

Located approximately 90 kilometres southeast of Coober Pedy.
Owned by WPG Resources.

Banded iron formation (BIF), various forms of gneiss and metapelite and migmatite. A zone of high grade iron ore mineralisation is contained in two sub-parallel elongate lensoidal bodies of massive specular (micaceous) hematite, thought to have formed as a result of hydrothermal enrichment of a metamorphosed BIF.

SARIG Mineral Deposit Information
"Peculiar Knob, a deposit of coarse grained, specular hematite in host granitoid of the Mount Woods Complex. It was initially identified by its prominent linear aeromagnetic signature. Follow up drilling identified a hematite body with dimensions ~1 km long EW, by ~35m wide. The deepest drill intersection was to ~300m depth. The strong magnetic signature was due to strong remnant magnetisation attributed to a preserved magnetite core within individual hematite grains. Cover was 12-20m of flat-lying mudstone of the Cretaceous Bulldog Shale. The deposit was thought to be of hydrothermal origin, formed by the replacement by hematite of a favourable host rock constituted dominantly of quartz and magnetite. Later drilling by Western Plains Resources LTD to a depth ~120m identified a JORC-compliant resource of 19.4Mt @ 63.7% Fe, 0.01% P, 7.3% SiO2, 0.3% Al2O3, and 0.5% LOI, using a cut-off grade of 55% Fe (2010). "

"Peculiar Knob is located on the southern margin of the Mount Woods Inlier in a region of complex linear, elongate to equidimensional magnetic anomalies. The region lies almost totally beneath younger, flat lying cover sediments. Basement rocks are low to high grade metamorphic, Palaeoproterozoic metasediments, not satisfactorily correlated with similar sequences of Palaeoproterozoic metasediments in other regions of the State."

"Discovery Year: 1985"
"Discovery Details: Discovered in hole RD/DD85EN19 during testing of a small, coincident magnetic/gravity anomaly. Intersected hematite from 24 to 73m. Further drilling in 1995 by PIRSA as part of the south Australian Steel and Energy(SASE) joint veture."

The deposit is buried beneath 12–35 m of the flat-lying Cretaceous sediments (Bulldog Shale) and was mined between 2011 and 2015. The deposit consists of a zone of high-grade hematite mineralization, roughly 1 km in length, ~35 m wide and up to ~300 m deep.

Fossils

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References

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