equations It seems that Tuvatu/Navilawa (TN) checks about every box, in all ways, when you compare it to Emperor/Vatakoula (EV) for being twins. Even so, a person may have chalked all this up to just hopium and speculatatite, except they found the high grade resource at Tuvatu.!
When the Emperor geologists who came down got well into exploring it, and saw what they had, they may well have said, ‘Eureka!, Emperor the 2
nd!. …… (although the mine up north had found 2,000 g/t AU vs only 1,650 g/t , 50 km south.)
So if EV = LAGS (large alkaline gold system) and TN = EV, then TN = LAGS is a very good possibility. Add to this that it seems TN may have a larger area of good prospecting. With that in mind the following information is pretty intriguing.
……..
Alkaline igneous rocks of the Navilawa caldera host the Tuvatu low-sulfidation epithermal gold deposit………. highlights the potential presence of a large gold telluride system in the Navilawa caldera, in addition to the gold resource in the Tuvatu prospect There are strong geological similarities, (including Au–Tellurium (Teluride) between the metallic mineralization in the Navilawa caldera and elsewhere in the SW Pacific Ocean at the Emperor, Porgera, Acupan, Mt. Kare, and Lihir deposits….
…….. Epithermal gold telluride deposits constitute some of the world’s largest sources of gold and occur in igneous rocks of alkaline (e.g., Cripple Creek, Colorado), to calc-alkaline afnity. Included in the group of epithermal deposits genetically related to alkaline igneous rocks is the Emperor gold–silver telluride deposit, Fiji, which contains approximately 10 Moz of Au.
….The world-class epithermal gold deposits Cripple Creek, USA, Emperor, Fiji, and (Lihir) and Porgera, Papua New Guinea are all hosted by potassic calc-alkaline or alkaline rocks.
From an abstract in Researchgate about alkaline gold systems:
…..It is significant that the … gold telluride veins are hosted by
alkaline igneous rocks, as this metallogenic association has attracted much attention due to a possible connection between the magmatism and the mineralization. Indeed, numerous studies of gold telluride deposits have suggested that tellurium and gold in these deposits mostly originated from the spatially and temporally associated
alkaline magmas …..;Cripple Creek, Colorado, …..Emperor, Fiji, …..Porgera,….
The economic importance of gold telluride mineralization results from the fact that some of these deposits are giants in terms of ore reserves. A possible explanation for this association is that it may reflect enrichment of tellurium in the lithospheric mantle, possibly by sediment recycling……According to this explanation, the tellurium is transported into the crust by the rift-related
alkaline magmas that also originate in this environment. ...
……
Alkalic Au-(Cu) porphyry deposits include some of the world's highest-grade porphyry gold resources and some of the largest gold accumulations in epithermal environments (e.g., Cripple Creek and Lihir).
. High-K
alkaline magmatism is spatially and genetically associated with gold mineralization worldwide …… Such activity has produced a number of considerable gold deposits, including the Cripple Creek gold deposit in the United States, the Kirkland Lake gold deposit in Canada and the Emperor gold deposit in Fiji.
Eureka
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284491480_Gold_deposits_related_to_alkaline_magmatism