The Dastakert porphyry Cu-Mo deposit is located on the northern slope of the Bargushat mountain range, the south-east parting of Zangezur mountain range; 3 km south of the village of Dastakert, southern Armenia. The Zangezur mountain range is a part of Late Eocene-Oligocene and Miocene magmatic arc, eroded to the epizonal granite level. The oldest basement units are Neoproterozoic schists with some marble interbeds overlain by Lower Paleozoic, Devonian, Permian and Cretaceous shallow marine sediments. The predominantly andesitic arc volcanism started in Lower Eocene and continued, in several cycles, until Pleistocene. The Eocene-Oligocene (~38-37 Ma) and Miocene (24-22 Ma) stages produced the most intrusive plutons of monzonite, granodiorite through biotite mionzogranite as well as swarms of porphyry and lamprophyre dikes. A number of porphyry Cu and Cu-Mo, Mo-Cu occurrences and deposits are associated with these intrusions; the largest Mo-Cu porphyry, Karajan, is related to the lower Miocene Meghri pluton, a part of the Vokhchi granitoid complex (see LT 5028).
In Dastakert the mineralization is in thermally hornfelsed Eocene andesitic lavas and pyroclastics intersected by diorite porphyry dikes, in the roof and on flanks of the Eo3-Ol1 granodiorite pluton.
The dastakert Cu-Mo deposit is controlled by a NW-trending zone of brittle fragmentation in thermally metamorphosed andesite intersected by a number of diorite porphyry dikes. The width of the zone ranges from 50 to 300 m and there are a number of superimposed younger generation fractures.
Economic Cu-Mo mineralization is confined to a number of short en-echelon WNW trends that overlap in time with emplacement of porphyry dikes; there are pre-, syn- and post-mineralization dikes. The porphyry-style Cu-Mo mineralization is multistage (up to 10 stages recognized), dominated by early stages of chalcopyrite and molybdenite filling fractures in biotite and K-feldspar altered hornfels and dikes. The later stages have added bornite, enargite and tennantite and are followed by quartz and carbonate veins with pyrite and sphalerite in sericite-altered wallrocks.
Zangezur Range was glaciated in Pleistocene so zones of enrichment and gossans have been eroded away.
In 2012 the endowment was not available, but was estimated at less than 50 kt Cu, grades 0.5-1% Cu, 0.05-0.1% Mo.
(Source: Peter Laznicka, September 2012)
