Resumen de Les phosphates de Fe et Mn des pegmatites de Valmy, Massif des Alberes (Pyrénées Orientales), France
François Fontan, A.M. Fransolet
The Fe and Mn phosphate-bearing pegmatites of Valmy, Alberes massif (Pyrénées Orientales), France. We have studied the pegmatite veins enclosed in the micaschists near the castel of Valmy (Pyrénées Orientales). They are composed of quartz, albite, muscovite, more rarely of garnet, zircon, pyrite, spinel (s.s) and rarely of niobite. These pegmatites have a complex and original mineralogy of Fe, Mn, phosphates, some of them being rare. Graftonite, triphilite, sarcopside, magniotriplite, apatite, have been determined in the pneumatolytic phase and, rockbridgeite, vivianite, and whiteite in the hydrothermal phase. We have to point that Valmy is the first desposit of whiteite in Europe and the third of magniotriplite in the world. The paragenetic sequence established on the basis of this sections study and chemical analyses is as follows: first graftonite formation then triphylite, sarcopside, and garnet; magniotriplite and niobite have probably crystallized at the same time than these last minerals. It is noticeable that the magnesium contents in the phosphates are uncommon. These pegmatite veins, similarly to these of the Western stocks Trois Seigneurs, Aston, Arize (Fontan 1978), are concordant or discordant on the major schistosity of the andalousite and sillimanite micaschists at the bottom of the paleozoic sequence; they are associated with little stocks of acidic leucogranite rich in muscovite. This study shows the extension of the lithium district of the Pyrénées in the Eastern part of Pyrénées.
