Nanoscopic processes generated gold and silver riches in southern Mexico.
International collaboration documents, for the first time in over 300 years, the presence of gold and silver nanomelts in exploited deposits.
Scientists combine micro- and nanoscale analysis of fluids and solids trapped in quartz crystals associated with metallic mineralization.
Seville, March 20, 2025. Researchers from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (IACT-CSIC), a center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and the Institute of Geology, part of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), have documented that the exceptional gold and silver enrichment in a deposit in southern Mexico was due to nanoscopic gold transport and concentration processes. In the work, published in Nature Communications, by the Nature group, the researchers document for the first time the presence of gold- and silver-rich nanomelts in epithermal deposits in the southern state of Oaxaca. These metallic nanomelts were secreted during the rise of magmas originating in deep regions of the Earth’s crust, and were subsequently transferred to hydrothermal fluids that deposited metallic minerals of economic interest.
Work published in: Cano, N.A., González-Jiménez, J.M., Camprubí, A., Morales-Casique, E., González-Partida, E., 2025. Transient non-soluble noble metal transport in hydrothermal ore systems. Nature Communications 16, 252. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57740-7
