Investigation of geochemistry, mineral chemistry and changes in magnetite mineralization generations in the Khak Sorkh iron skarn, west of Yazd.

Khak Sorkh iron deposit located about 42 km northwest of Nadushan town in Yazd Province. Host rock include upper Triassic-Jurassic limestone which are intruded by Oligo-Miocene granitoid bodies. Mineralization is dominated by magnetite, and serpentine is the main waste mineral. Skarn mineral assemblages include clinopyroxene, garnet, tremolite phlogopite and epidote. The characteristics of mineralization are: magnetite mineralization in two generations, presence of serpentine as the main waste mineral, hornfelsed greywacke units which come between intrusive bodies and skarned limestone units, absence of obvious zoning in endoskarn and exoskarn parts, presence of Ni-Co-As sulfides, high amount of Zn, As, Co and Mn in magnetite geochemical results and the increasing Fe along with decreasing Mg contents in magnetite at both deposit and crystal scales from primary to secondary types. Minor elements contents of geochemical results have been used for distinguishing of different mineral deposits (e.g, Dare et al., 2012; Dupuis and Beaudoin, 2011; Nadoll et al., 2012) and they are in good accordance to hydrothermal and skarn type deposits like: low contents of Cr (less than 10 ppm), high contents of Mg (2.2 to 7.5 ppm), low TiO2 (from 0.01 to 0.3 ppm), low amounts of incompatible elements including Ag (