Structural position of the Magellan Mountains (Pacific Ocean) ironmanganese mineralization according to morphotectonic and cosmogeological data

The use of morphostructural analysis and cosmogeological decoding methods by the working with the underwater Magellan Mountains relief visualized digital models made it possible to identify the spatial and hierarchical organization of ring anomalies and lineaments, correlated, respectively, with focal structures and fault zones of different ranks. According to complex investigations results and available regional geological materials, the decisive importance in the formation and development of the concerned mountain system attaches to the phenomena of mantle diapirism and basaltoid volcanism, which were realized discretely in time during the Cretaceous – Middle Miocene chronological period. The large (radius about 270 km) focal system which are correlated with the underlitospheric mantle diapir projection and expressed in the relief as relict magmatic swell had played the main role in Fe, Mn, Co mineralization distribution within the Magellan Mountains investigated district. The ore mineralization formation was going on differentially in time and space over a time long period starting from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian-Maasticht), against the background of a constantly renewed concentration of Fe, Mn, Co metals in the bottom layers of the water column due to hydrotherms and galmyrolysis phenomena. The radial-concentric distribution of ore mineralization is typical for the relict swell uplift, for individual paleovolcanic structures and their groupings correlated with large guyots. The obtained data served as the basis of forecast criterions for this mineralization type.