Pilbara galenas: Precise isotopic assay of the oldest Australian leads; model ages and growth-curve implications

Precise Pb isotopic data are reported for 19 galenas and 2 other minerals from the Archaean Pilbara District of Western Australia. Repeated measurements on the Broken Hill Standard Ore show good agreement with published calibrations from two other laboratories, and an overall 95 percent confidence level within ±0.05 percent per mass unit, whether fractionation correction is by the double-spike procedure or by use of a simple mass-dependent factor. Two stratiform deposits yield the most primitive ratios (206Pb/204Pb=11.89; 207Pb/204Pb=13.69; 208Pb/204Pb=31.79) and model ages in good agreement with the 3.45 Ga age on zircons from volcanics correlatable with the host-rocks. Other minor galena occurrences, with quartz-vein association, appear to be younger, with position along the growth curve surprisingly consistent with the age sequence predicted from field observation. The data also extend the time-range of previously-reported trends in ‘apparent U/Pb’ of the conceptual Pb source, and reveal new features of the corresponding Th/U systematics: a generally-observable trend in the Archaean of Australia, Southern Africa and West Greenland is that the ‘source Th/U’ seems significantly higher than is allowed for in any of the current Pb-growth models. In detail, the sample-sample variations in indicated source parameters are in many cases correlatable with the nature of the neighbouring rocks and emphasise that, whereas Pb isotope rations in the galenas of huge deposits may well serve as a convenient sampler of overall trends in the Earth's crust, subeconomic occurrences such as these may reveal valuable information about local variations in U-Th-Pb distribution.