Past achievements and future challenges in the use of mineral deposit models, regional tectonics and metallogeny in mineral exploration.

The application of geochemistry to exploration had a world-wide impact in the 1960s and 1970s, being applied in the Soviet Union and China on a scale undreamed of in the West. The advent of mineral deposit models, regional tectonics and metallogenic modelling provided a sound basis for exploration. Major discoveries resulting from models for specific deposit types included porphyry deposits at Urad-Henderson, in Colorado, and Namosi, in Fiji, the Olympic Dam Proterozoic Fe oxide deposit in South Australia, epithermal deposits in central Italy, NW Turkey and Indonesia, and mesothermal lode gold deposits in Western Australia. The integration of regional tectonics with metallogenic modelling led to the discovery of more than 200 gold-silver occurrences in the small province of Zhejiang, in the South China fold belt, during a five-year geochemical campaign, and of the Orange River diamonds, in South Africa, when tectonism related to mantle plumes was combined with continental reconstruction of Gondwana.
The application of geochemistry to exploration had a world-wide impact in the 1960s and 1970s, being applied in the Soviet Union and China on a scale undreamed of in the West. The advent of mineral deposit models, regional tectonics and metallogenic modelling provided a sound basis for exploration. Major discoveries resulting from models for specific deposit types included porphyry deposits at Urad-Henderson, in Colorado, and Namosi, in Fiji, the Olympic Dam Proterozoic Fe oxide deposit in South Australia, epithermal deposits in central Italy, NW Turkey and Indonesia, and mesothermal lode gold deposits in Western Australia. The integration of regional tectonics with metallogenic modelling led to the discovery of more than 200 gold-silver occurrences in the small province of Zhejiang, in the South China fold belt, during a five-year geochemical campaign, and of the Orange River diamonds, in South Africa, when tectonism related to mantle plumes was combined with continental reconstruction of Gondwana.