Scientific publications

In the late 20th century many gold deposits, including Suurikuosikky, Europe's biggest deposit (over 110 t Au), in the Paleoproterozoic Lapland greenstone belt, were discovered in the non-Russian part of the Fennoscandian Shield, suggesting that in Russian Karelia economic gold concentrations are likely to occur not only in Archean greenstone belts, as has been thought before, but also in Proterozoic rocks. Several small gold localities are known in the extension of the Lapland greenstone belt, in the Karelian craton - Belomorian mobile belt jointing zone, and more ore occurrences of a mesothermal orogenic type of gold deposits, highly perspective for the Precambrian, have been discovered in the past few years. Several genetically similar occurrences and a gold-telluride-type mineralization were located in the northern Lake Ladoga region, in the extension of the Ladoga-Raahe metallogenic zone with well-known mesothermal gold-arsenide deposits. This, together with other evidence, shows that the Karelian craton - Svecofennian foldbelt jointing zone is likely to host noble-metal mineralization. Large complex porphyry-type deposits with noble metals are likely to be discovered in Karelia, and the already known Lobash-1 and Jalonvaara deposits will probably be re-evaluated as big low-grade ore deposits of the above rank, provided additional study is carried out.