Outcrops of Mineral Deposits
Many mineral deposits have been found because they outcrop at the surface; the discoveries may have been by accident or they may have been aided by consideration of geologic factors. There are still vast unexplored areas in which mineral deposits are likely to be found standing out at the surface. For much of the world, however, the surface has been so thoroughly examined that the easy surface discoveries have been made, and the future is likely to see a larger application of scientific methods to ground where the outcrops do not tell an obvious story. Mineral deposits may fail to outcrop because of covering by weathered rock or soil, by glacial deposits, or by younger formations (surface igneous flows or sediments), or the outcrop of a deposit may be so altered by weathering as to give little clue to the uninitiated as to what is beneath. Mineral deposits formed in older geologic periods have in most cases been deeply covered by later sediments and igneous rocks. Such deposits are in reach of exploration from the surface only in places where erosion has partly or wholly removed the later covering. An illustration of this condition is furnished in the Great Basin district of Nevada, where ore bodies have been covered by later lava flows. The ore-bearing districts are merely islands exposed by erosion in a vast sea of lava and surface sediments. Beyond reasonable doubt many more deposits are so covered than are exposed, and it is no exaggeration to say that by far the greater part of the mineral wealth of the earth may never be found. Where a mineral-bearing horizon is exposed by erosion at the surface, underground operations may follow this horizon a long way below the capping rocks; but, after all, such operations are geographically small as compared with the vast areas over which the covering rocks give no clue as to what is beneath. One of the principal problems of economic geology for the future is to develop means for exploration in territories of this sort. A beginning has been made in various districts by the use of reconnaissance drilling, combined with interpretation of all the geologic and structural features. The discovery of one of the largest nickel deposits in the Sudbury district of Canada was made by reconnaissance drilling to ascertain the general geologic features, in an area so deeply covered as to give little suggestion as to the proper location for attack.