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Geology of the Renard 2 pipe to 1000 m depth, Renard Mine, Québec, Canada: insights into Kimberley-type pyroclastic kimberlite emplacement

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Abstract

The Renard 2 pipe is currently the deepest-drilled and most extensively studied kimberlite body in the Renard cluster, central Québec, Canada, forming the major component of the Mineral Resource of Stornoway Diamond Corporation’s Renard Mine. Renard 2 is infilled with two distinct kimberlite units that exhibit Kimberley-type pyroclastic kimberlite and related textures. Hypabyssal kimberlite also occurs as smaller cross-cutting sheets and irregular intrusions. The units are distinguished by their rock textures, groundmass mineral assemblages, olivine macrocryst size distributions and replacement products, mantle and country rock xenolith contents, whole rock geochemical signatures, bulk densities and diamond grades. These differences are interpreted to reflect different mantle ascent and near-surface emplacement processes and are here demonstrated to be vertically continuous from present surface to over 1000 m depth. The distinctive petrological features together with sharp, steep and cross-cutting internal contact relationships, show that each unit was formed from a separate batch of mantle-derived kimberlite magma, and was completely solidified before subsequent emplacement of the later unit. The mineralogy and textures of the ultra-fine-grained interclast matrix are consistent with those described at numerous Kimberley-type pyroclastic kimberlite localities around the world and are interpreted to reflect rapid primary crystallization during emplacement of separate kimberlite magmatic systems. The units of fractured and brecciated country rock surrounding the main kimberlite pipe contain kimberlite-derived material including carbonate providing evidence of subsurface brecciation. Together these data show that Renard 2 represents the deeper parts of a Kimberley-type pyroclastic kimberlite pipe system and demonstrates that their diagnostic features result from magmatic crystallisation during subsurface volcanic emplacement processes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Stornoway Diamond Corporation for the permission to publish this paper, and in particular Isabelle Lépine and Vlad Zhuk for their vital contributions to the Renard project and the data presented herein. The whole rock geochemistry data analysis and interpretations by Robert Campbell are gratefully acknowledged and Scott-Smith Petrology Inc. is also acknowledged and thanked for its resources in photographing thin sections. Barbara Scott Smith and Chris C. Medlin are sincerely thanked for their independent insightful discussions and constructive feedback during the writing of this manuscript. We would also like to thank the reviews by Stephen Sparks and Barbara Scott Smith and well as the editorial handling by Andrea Giuliani, as their constructive feedback and input through the review process have greatly improved our manuscript.

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  1. Stornoway Diamond Corporation, Unit 118 – 980 West 1st Street, North Vancouver, BC, V7P 3N4, Canada

    Colleen Muntener & Matthew Gaudet

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  1. Colleen Muntener
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  2. Matthew Gaudet
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Correspondence to Colleen Muntener.

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Editorial handling: A. Giuliani

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Muntener, C., Gaudet, M. Geology of the Renard 2 pipe to 1000 m depth, Renard Mine, Québec, Canada: insights into Kimberley-type pyroclastic kimberlite emplacement. Miner Petrol 112 (Suppl 2), 421–432 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00710-018-0614-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00710-018-0614-7

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