Several “porphyry copper” structures have been discovered in the Metaliferi Mts. during the 70s, some of them of real economic value (i.e. Rosia Poieni, Bolcana). The Rosia Poieni ore deposit represents the largest Cu-Au porphyry structure in the Metaliferi Mts., matching in celebrity the gold-silver deposit at Rosia Montana, located at approximately 4 km. The existence of some paleo-calderas in the Metaliferi Mts. has recently been recognized in the Rosia Montana district (O’Connor et al., 2004) and in other perimeters. It is very probable that such calderas have functioned as complex, circular-shaped calderas which hosted hydrothermal activity. Such activity may have mobilized pre-concentrated mineralization lying around apical plutons of K₂ (Marcoux et al., 2002) or Precambrian age. This genetic scenario explains well the fundamental characteristic of the metallogenesis in the Metaliferi Mts.

porphyry structure, vertical zoning, periplutonic zoning, hypogene zoning,Emmons zones, caldera-type structures