New 40Ar/39Ar Data of Gold Mineralization in the Ailaoshan Gold Belt, Yunnan Province, China

Objective“Orogenic gold deposits,”which account for 30%of global gold resources(Frimmel and Hennigh,2015),is one of the most important types of gold deposits in the world.This kind of gold deposit is supposed to have spatial and temporal distribution association with the accretionary orogenic belt.The Ailaoshan Gold Belt,where there are many large orogenic gold deposits including Jinchang,Daping,Laowangzhai,Donggualing,and Changan,contribute substantially to Chinese gold resources.The Himalayan orogen and Ailaoshan Orogen,both have experienced the early accretionary orogenesis and the subsequent collisional orogenesis are one of the biggest orogenic belts on the earth.Gold mineralization can be divided into that the earlier Yarlung Zangbo suture zone(59–44 Ma)and the later Ailaoshan Orogen(35–26 Ma)(Li et al.,2017),based on previous geochronological studies.In order to find out if there are any connections between these two gold events,we present 40Ar/39Ar data of hydrothermal sericite collected from the Xiachahe gold deposit in the northwest of the Ailaoshan Gold Belt.However,our new geochronology data regards this as a continuous gold mineralization event resulting from the India–Eurasia collision.