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You Can Find Platinum With Diamonds
Scientists have traced the origin of the unique platinum deposits in a South African region by using diamonds.
The worlds richest source of platinum and related metals is in South Africa known as the Bushveld Complex.
Researchers from the Carnegie Institution in the US and the University of Cape Town in South Africa have traced the origin of the unique ore deposits by using diamonds.
Platinum group elements (PGEs), which include platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium and iridium, are extremely rare in the Earths crust.
Previous isotopic studies of rocks from the Bushveld Complex had suggested that a significant fraction of the magma that formed the complex and deposited the ores came from shallow parts of the crust, despite the rarity of PGEs there compared to the Earths mantle.
Shirey and Stephen H. Richardson of the University of Cape Town studied minute mineral inclusions in about 20 diamonds mined from areas surrounding the Bushveld Complex.
These diamonds formed at depths of 150-200 kilometers within the Earths mantle.
By measuring the ratios of certain isotopes of strontium, osmium, and neodymium in the mineral inclusions, the researchers were able to determine the isotopic signatures of the different regions of the mantle where the diamonds grew.
They then compared these signatures with those of ore rocks in the Bushveld Complex.
Richardson and Shirey found that the isotopic signatures of the ores could be matched by varying mixtures of source rocks in the mantle beneath the continental crust.
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