A Research Review of Iron Oxide Copper-Gold Deposits

Iron oxide copper-gold （IOCG） deposits are a research focus of the current ore deposit geology, and have attracted much attention among the worldwide geologists and exploration experts due to their shallow depth, a wide variety of mineral species and large scale. This paper presents a review of the present IOCG deposits research, which includes the definition of IOCG deposits, temporal and spatial distribution, ore-forming environments, ore-forming magmatic rocks, their geological features, ore-controlling structures and ore-bearing rocks, mineralized alteration zoning, and their genesis and ore-forming process. This work also proposed the ore prospecting direction of IOCG deposits from a trinity model of metaUogenic geological bodies, metallogenic structure surface and metailogenic information signs, and discussed the existing problems of the IOCG deposits research.