The Yellowknife greenstone belt, also called the Yellowknife Volcanic Belt, is an Archean greenstone belt in the southern Slave craton, Northwest Territories, Canada. It is mostly made of mafic volcanic rocks (basalt and andesite) and is bordered to the east by batholithic intrusions of the Western Granodiorite Complex and beyond to the north by the Duckfish Lake Granite.[1] Intrusive equivalents (gabbro and diorite) are collectively known as the Kam Group. Most of the Yellowknife townsite and the Con and Giant gold mines are within the Kam Group. The Yellowknife greenstone belt stands out as a positive topographic feature.
The Yellowknife greenstone belt is composed of metavolcanic rocks of the more than 2.70 billion-year-old Kam Group (consisting of the Chan, Crestaurum, Townsite and Yellowknife Bay formations) and the 2.69 to 2.66 billion-year-old Banting Group (including the Ingraham, Walsh and Prosperous formations). It is crosscut extensively by syn to post-volcanic gabbro dikes and sills and quartz-feldspar porphyry dikes. Gold deposits occur in quartz-carbonate-bearing shear zones within the mafic rocks, and quartz lodes within greywacke-mudstone turbidites.[2]
See also
[edit]- List of volcanoes in Canada
- Volcanism of Canada
- Volcanism of Northern Canada
- Geography of the Northwest Territories
- List of greenstone belts
References
[edit]- ^ Cousens, B. L. (2000). "Geochemistry of the Archean Kam Group, Yellowknife Greenstone Belt, Slave Province, Canada". The Journal of Geology. 108 (2): 181–197. Bibcode:2000JG....108..181C. doi:10.1086/314397. ISSN 0022-1376. PMID 10736269.
- ^ Shelton, Kevin; Smith, Amanda; Hill, Logan; Falck, Hendrik (2016). "Ore petrography, fluid inclusion and stable isotope studies of gold and base-metal sulphide mineralization in a northern portion of the Yellowknife greenstone belt, NWT Open File 2016-02". researchgate. Northwest Territories Geological Survey. Retrieved 26 August 2025.
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