Heavy minerals and provenance of the paleozoic suffi formation, Western desert, iraq.

Abstract

Heavy minerals analyses were carried out on 10 samples from the clastic Suffi Formation (the Ordovician-Carboniferous unit in the western Iraqi desert). The suite of minerals consists mainly of opaque minerals including pyrite, ilmenite, magnetite and hematite and the non-opaques is represented by zircon, tourmaline, cutile, garnet, epidote, kyanite, staurolite, leucoxene, chlorite and biotite. The nature and occurrence of the above heavy minerals association reflect a source area of the crystalline basement rocks of Iraq. These basement rocks are coomposed of metamorphic rocks and granites complexes. They belong to the Arabian part of African (Nubio Arabian) Precambrian platform.