Geochronology, Petrogenesis, and Metallogenic Implications of Quartz Monzonite Porphyry in the Shanlixu Copper–Gold Deposit in the Lujiang–Chuzhou Area, Middle–Lower Yangtze River Valley Metallogenic Belt, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments on the article “Geochronology, Petrogenesis and Metallogenic Implications of Diorite Porphyry in the Shanlixu Cu-Au Deposit in Lujiang- Chuzhou Area, Middle-Lower Yangtze River Valley Metallogenic Belt, China “ by Yang Cai, Cheng Tang, Ke Shi, Ziteng Li, Tao Ma and Siwen Fan.

The present manuscript has a good scientific potential to be published. However there are several issues to be solved mostly related with the locations of different geological formations, not familiar to foreign readers:

Figure 1 should be strongly improved: -There are missing ticks of latitude and longitude; -Lujiang-Chuzhou Metallogenic Area (LCMA) mentioned as located in the middle part of MLYB is not evident on the figure; -As well, there are missing “adjacent Qingling-Dabie Metallogenic Belt in the northwest”;-The tringles showing different metallogenic deposits should be better emphasized with different colors that various age magmatic rocks;- There are missing on the map the location of the Shaxi Cu-Au deposit, Langyashan Cu deposit and Shanlixu Cu-Au deposit (see lines 41 - 48) mentioned in the text;- Dabie orogenic belt and Tan-Lu fault zone are also missing from the figure 1 (line 49).

Figure 2 should be improved: -There are missing ticks of latitude and longitude; At least for the study area the rocks should be monzonite and or quartz monzonite; the symbols on the map have no explanation in the legend; -Why it is necessary to show line 2 if there is not shown profile related to it?

There are missing relevant reference in the text (see annotated manuscript);

The authors decided, without any proof that their rocks are diorite porphyry, however according to their geochemical data the rocks prove to be monzonite or quartz monzonites; at lines 65-66 such rocks were previously mentioned by the authors.  The use of TAS and Peccerillo and Taylor diagrams are useful for volcanic rocks, but are not adequate for phaneritic intrusive rocks. Even in this situation, their analyses plot in monzonite and quartz monzonite fields in TAS. I may suggest using IUGG accepted QAPF diagram for intrusive rocks, calculating the parameters using CIPW procedure.

There are very few information related to the hydrothermal alterations related to Cu-Au deposit; this should be better described in the text.

I have several other observations to be solved in the annotated manuscript.

For the moment I am asking major revision.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of Article: "Geochronology, Petrogenesis and Metallogenic Implications of Diorite Porphyry in the Shanlixu Cu-Au Deposit in Lujiang-Chuzhou Area, Middle-Lower Yangtze River Valley Metallo-4 genic Belt, China"

by Yang Cai, Cheng Tang, Ke Shi, Ziteng Li, Tao Ma1 and Siwen Fan

 

comments:

Interesting, but very small database in terms of geochemical data (e.g. Fig. 6: TAS classification diagram), how significant is it?

Detailed comments:

line 39: "It has become one of the most recent "hotspots" in ore deposit geology[1-14]." "hottest" sounds to colloquial.

line 43: "...including the Shaxi Cu-Au deposit, the Langyashan Cu deposit, the Shanlixu Cu-Au deposit, and so on." Add articles!

line 46: Figure 1. Geological maps of igneous and deposits in MLYB: I would choose a lighter red (pinkish) color for the mesozoic intrusvie rocks to distinguish them better 

line 50/51: change, better: "However, little research on the Shanlixu Cu-Au deposit has been done by predecessors"

line 89: ...plagioclase (~4-15%), quartz (~4-6%) and biotite (~4-5%). I would put the ~ in front of the range of numbers /e.g. (~4-6%) because this is more logical.

line 103: "In situ Hf isotopic..."

line 128: "Major and trace element data for the Shanlixu diorite porphyry are listed in Table 2." "listed"

lines 130, 132: (TA=K2O+Na2O) the numbers must be in subscript.

line 135: number of samples very low, possibly statistically insignificant. It would be better to have more at least 15 samples.

line 136: "Figure 6..." Figure written out and space between both

line 139: please condense the table width by using a shorter sample name such as "K2-18-1" instead of "SLXZK2-18-1". The tabel looks to bulky concerning width.

lines 147-149: figure caption must not be separated from diagram by page break

line 148: (Normalized values for chondrite and primitive mantle are from Sun and McDonough, 1989[34]). It should be Primitive mantle (Fig. 7b) and not MORB

line 161: "...Th (6.33 - 278 ppm) and U (241 - 1495 ppm), unusal use of "~", would replace by "-"

line 166: "...(Ce/Ce*=12~384) and negative Eu anomalies 166 (Eu/Eu*=0.58~0.92)."  unusal use of "~", would replace by "-"

line 178: "...that Mesozoic magmatism-mineralization was divided into three stages in the MLYB,: "stages" and "the" before MLYN.

line 181: "Mesozoic magmatism and mineralization in the LCMA": Add "the" in front of "LCMA".

line 183: "...such as the Langyashan Cu deposit, the Shaxi Cu-Au deposit, and the Mashan Au deposit. Add articles!

line 187: "Table 5. The ages of major plutons in the LCMA.": "plutons" in plural form, "the" before LCMA.

lines 188-198:  Unusal use of "~", would replace by "-"

lines 196-197: "...such as the Dongguashan Cu deposit, the Tianmashan Au deposit, the Sujiadian Cu deposit, and the Anqin Cu deposit, and so on..." Add articles!

lines 228-229: "...similar geochemical characteristics to adakitic rocks." "to"

lines 285-288: Bring figure cpation 12 to page 285 or move diagram to page 286 so that caption stands directly below figure.

line 290: "...diorite porphyry formed under a continental arc margin setting con..." incomplete sentence.

line 292: "...Mesozoic adakites in MLYB are strongly associated to Cu-Au mineralization [98-100]"; rephrase: "Cu-Au mineralization [98-100] is strongly associated to Mesozoic adakites in the MLYB."

line 303, 306, 307: "...different with major ore-forming ages in the CLMA, but...", add article!

line 304: rephrase "Based on the above study, it is suggested that except Cu-Au min-..."

line 306: "It’s similar to other metallogenic areas in the MLYB, such as..."

line 307: "...It provides new insights for exploration of Cu-Au deposit in the CLMA." use article, elaborate on the this, be more specific!

line 309: "The zircon U-Pb data of the Shanlixu diorite porphyry indicates..."

line 342: "...Belt. Chinese Science Bulletin, 2020, 65: 3665-3677." Year in bold!

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I am not qualified to assess the quality of English in this paper because I am not native speaker, but in my opinion minor editing of English language is required, especially w.r. t. the use of articles in front of proper names.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper is well organized and constitutes an important contribution to the study of Cu-Au mineralization. It presents a good review of a metallogenetic area in China, and new geochemical, geochronological and trace elements zircon data of a diorite porphyry, intruded in the region. The authors discussed the source and intrusion conditions of the diorite porphyry and stablished its relationship with the Cu-Au mineralization in the area.

However, even not being an English native speaker, I believe an English language major revision is crucial to make the text more fluid and error-free. I have made a series of observations along the manuscript, that should be considered before a final decision. For now, I request moderate revisions to improve the final version of the manuscript.

The Regional geological map needs revisions. Belts and others, cited along the manuscript, are not included in the map of figure 1.

I also suggest to include How did you calculeted Ce-anomaly, Ce3+, Ce4+ and Eu anomaly

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have solved the requested comments with two exceptions:

-In Figure 2 should be modified the rock symbols, according to international rules and the symbols should be added to the legend.

-Figure 6b (K2O vs. SiO2) should be replaced with TAS figure from the initial version.

This is the reason the manuscript still needs a minor  revision.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. The revision job has been finished. The specific revisions are as follows.

At first, figure 2 has been improved. The rock symbols have been added to the legend.

Second, TAS diagram has been added in figure 6.

Finally, thank you very much for your review of my manuscript again!