 |
| Here are a few links about the Au-bearing gravels of the California foothills and Sierra Nevada. (It's time to get this out of my drafts folder.) |
Garside, Larry J., Henry, Christopher D., Faulds, James E., and Hinz, Nicholas H., 2005, The Upper Reaches of the Sierra Nevada Auriferous Gold Channels, California and Nevada, in Rhoden, H.N., Steininger, R.C., and Vikre, P. G., eds., Geological Society of Nevada Symposium 2005: Window to the World, Reno, Nevada, May 2005, p. 209-236.
Yeend, W.E., 1974, Gold-bearing gravel of the ancestral Yuba River, Sierra Nevada, California: U.S. Geological Survey Prof. Paper 772, 44 p., Plate 1 and Plate 2.
2 comments:
Actually these gravels do tell an interesting story if the books I read such as Rough Hewn Land are correct that the rivers actually started in NV back when Nevada was more like Tibet before the Farallon Plate vanished down its trench. Apparently Nevada at the time was 10 to 12 thousand feet high and the gold in the gravels actually came from NV. Once the plate went down the trench then spreading overtook compression and what is now Nevada collapsed (but also got a lot wider)
It's all pretty amazing! I had a professor who said the gold couldn't have come from the Mother Lode veins because it occurred (partly) upstream from the veins, so he attributed it to low-grade disseminations in an upstream massive sulfide belt -- but if he had known, he would have wanted to attribute the placer Au from erosion of Carlin-type disseminated gold in Nevada.
Post a Comment