Oldest gold nugget?

I've been thinking... and doing some homework... and I reckon I might have some of the oldest gold nuggets on the planet.... what do you reckon?

A bit of history (and apologies to any geos out there) - The earth formed out of gas clouds about 4.55 billion years ago and was molten and was thought to have stayed that way due to meteor bombardment till about 4 B years ago.  But that theory was debunked when they found the oldest known 'rocks' of terrestrial origin at Jack Hills in WA. They were actually zircon crystals in conglomerate and they are 4.4 B years old which means they formed just 150 million or so years after the earth did. It also means that there must have been some 'solid' crust and in fact liquid water. Jack Hills is part of the Yilgarn Craton and the gold there was thought to have deposited around 2.6 B years ago. The Pilbara Craton on the other hand is older - about 3.5 B old. The gold mineralization there occurred in two phases - the first 3.4 and the second 2.9 billion years ago.

Now from what i can piece together the conglomerates in the Pilbara - like those around Nullagine - are 'neoarchean' and the gold in them is termed a 'paleo-placer'. These conglomerates with nice round pebbles, and if you are real lucky nice smooth nuggets, were layed down about 2.5-2.7 B years ago (not real sure about these ages) .

So the smooth gold nuggets that I have found on the top of a hill may have only shed from their host conglomerate recently (last few thousand/million years?), but they are at least as old as the conglomerate which is about 2,500 million years old.. What's more they had to be shed from the reef and pummeled down a creek before the wash was converted to conglomerate. That's pretty damn old in my book - beat that! :) Stingray

Where are the pics, ??????

Hi Shorty,

I can't get a photo to load. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

Stingray

If you are using photobucket I can't help. But Ray knows the trick to it.

Hi Bignuggs, yep, I just set up a photobucket account but total novice and would appreciate some advice.

Cheers
Stingray

Ray is getting OLD    but he knows the process, a little patience is required.
You will get your pics in here.

Stingray,
Good stuff there. But not all "Pilbara Gold" has been "pummelled" down a creek and "resettled" mud that became conglomerate.

I had a lease near Nullagine, at Five Mile Sandy, west of the Barton's stamper battery. I "accidentally" wandered on to some ground owned by then "Wedgetail Prospecting". It overlooked the Nullagine airport.

I stumbled across an old patch but the finders had missed a few. Some were small, well rounded and tumbled as you say, but one piece about 7 grammes was like gold dust glued together with Superglue. Bit's were breaking off it and it wasn't deep either.

I sold it to a mate of mine and he had it wrapped in a gold wire 'cage' and it was an awesome sight to behold when the jeweller had finished it.

Damn!! I gotta get round to putting photos on here. I still have a photo of that bit somewhere, I'm sure.

Cat

Hi Cat, I would really like to see a photo of that. Those unusual bits are worth hanging on to if you can - hindsight is a wonderful thing!

The piece you describe sounds a bit like a BIG bit a mate found when we were prospecting together, a long time ago up near Marble Bar. It was the size and shape of a small spud, weighed 27oz, looked like crap but felt real heavy. We dropped it in HF acid and immediately you could see it was a cemented lump of fines. It shone of speckled gold in a dark matrix - I wanted to pull it out straight away but lost the argument. After a few days the thing effectively crumbled with the biggest of solid lumps about 20-30 gram but the majority just crumbled in your fingers to fine-med sand consistency.

Split 4 ways I think we ended up with about 5.5 oz of gold each. Wish we had kept it and sold it as is - never seen anything like it before or since. It was all on its lonesome too, in a bank with lots of old smooth wash around - we figured it must have been a cemented 'pocket' at some stage. I might even have a photo of it somewhere that I could scan.

Cheers
Stingray

Got this photo thing sorted at last!  


52 grammer on the surface



This is where the 52 grammer and the pile at left in the photo below came from

The two piles at the bottom are conglomerate gold and the others are typical alluvial nuggets.


Crocodile rock...

Cheers
Stingray

thats awsome

awesome pics and info,, thanks heaps and hope to catch up in the near future

happy hunting
Steve and Lea