2015 - Pine Point Mines & the Alexandra Reef Complex
Special thanks to the following sponsors:
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This year we went north of 60° to visit the Alexandra Reef Complex and the Pine Point Mines in the southern Northwest Territories. We stayed at the Twin Falls Territorial Campground near Enterprise. Our first day in the Territories provided us with a background geological history of sea-level rise on to Western Canada in the Devonian and a tour of the Pine Point Mines. The Pine Point Barrier Complex is host to some of Canada’s largest Mississippi Valley Type deposits. Over 63 million tons of ore were collected from the mines between 1964-1988. We will saw several different types of dolomites and examples of the sphalerite and galena minerals.
On the remaining two days of the field trip we traveled through a Late Devonian reef complex in the Alexandra Formation. We saw examples of coastal, lagoonal, back- reef, reef, and fore-reef environments. There are many well-preserved and diverse fossils in the Alexandra Formation. |
