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LITHOEN

Deposit

Rock Creek

Also known as Rock Lake, Montanore, Copper Gulch, Horizon Basin, Rock Peak

A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Montana, United States. The compilation classifies it as a Revett-type copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Quartzite. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, chalcopyrite, bornite, galena, native siver, pyrite, pyrrhotite.

Classification

recognition basis
authoritativeDatabase
realm
northAmerica

What this record is, and who says so

Recognised on the basis of

Authoritative database

A curated deposit database published by a scientific institution, in which inclusion is itself a documented editorial decision with stated criteria.

A deposit is an occurrence of sufficient size and grade that it might, under the most favourable circumstances, be considered to have economic potential. Lithoen records that a named authority made that judgement. It is not a statement that anything here is recoverable, and it is not a resource or a reserve.

Commodities documented here

  • Copper (commodity)documented association

    The compilation reports a grade for this metal at this deposit. Lithoen records the documented association and infers nothing about how it would be worked.

  • Silver (commodity)documented association

    The compilation reports a grade for this metal at this deposit. Lithoen records the documented association and infers nothing about how it would be worked.

Reported figures, and what each one is

A sample assay, a deposit average, a compiler total and a reported reserve are different quantities. Each figure below carries which one it is; none of them is a current resource or reserve.

299 Mt

Compiler total, for modelling

A sum assembled by a database compiler from production plus reserves plus resources at the lowest available cut-off, so that deposits can be compared in a grade-and-tonnage model. It is not a resource, not a reserve and not production; it is a modelling quantity, and the USGS databases Lithoen reads define their tonnage exactly this way.

The usgs sediment-hosted copper database reports an ore tonnage of 299.0 million tonnes for Rock Creek.

0.81 wt%m Copper

Deposit average

An average grade attributed to a whole deposit by a compiler, over a tonnage defined by that compiler at a stated cut-off. Not a measurement of anything: a summary of an estimate.

The usgs sediment-hosted copper database reports a copper grade of 0.81 weight percent for Rock Creek.

71 g/t Silver

Deposit average

An average grade attributed to a whole deposit by a compiler, over a tonnage defined by that compiler at a stated cut-off. Not a measurement of anything: a summary of an estimate.

The compilation reports a silver grade of 71.0 grams per tonne of ore for Rock Creek. The field is defined as the average grade of silver for the deposit, stated as grams per metric ton of ore.

The source records behind this

What one row of a published dataset was taken to mean, and why. The original record stays traceable after reconciliation.

  • Sediment-hosted copper deposits of the world (USGS OFR 03-107), record 493

    Named there
    Rock Creek
    The source calls it
    deposit
    Lithoen reads it as
    deposit (stated)

    The usgs sediment-hosted copper database states what one of its rows is, and this row is read as the deposit the compilers named. The compilation is a database of sediment-hosted copper deposits.

    Merged into this row by the compilers: Rock Lake, Montanore, Copper Gulch, Horizon Basin, Rock Peak. Those names were combined under the dataset’s own two-kilometre rule before Lithoen read it.

    Read and refused

    • grade and tonnage columns with no value — The compilation writes "(no value)" or leaves the field empty where the information was not available. Reading an empty field as zero would publish a measurement nobody made.

How this is mapped

One published representation of where Rock Creek is. Each is one interpretation, by one identified source, at one scale — not the shape of the thing itself.

  • Representative point

    Point · 1 positionspreferred for publication

    A single position standing for something that is not a point. It exists so a feature can be shown on a map or listed by location, and it asserts NOTHING about extent. A representative point for a 2,000 km province is a label anchor, not a location.

    A representative point for Rock Creek from the USGS sediment-hosted copper database. It marks where the compilation places the deposit; it is not a boundary, not a shaft, and implies nothing about the body's extent.

    Boundary certainty
    ApproximateThe position is known only within a distance much larger than the line width on any map that shows it. Drawing it thinner does not make it better known.
    Status of this geometry
    inferredThe status of the geometry, which need not match the status of what the entity’s claims assert.
    Dataset
    Sediment-hosted copper deposits of the world (USGS OFR 03-107)Cox, D.P., Lindsey, D.A., Singer, D.A., Moring, B.C., and Diggles, M.F., 2003, Sediment-hosted copper deposits of the world: Deposit models and database: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 03-107, doi:10.3133/ofr03107.

    What was done to this geometry

    • By Lithoen — Rounded to 4 decimal places. The compilation computed its decimal degrees from authored degrees-minutes-seconds columns, and the further digits are conversion residue rather than knowledge.
    • Before it reached Lithoen — The compilation computed these decimal degrees from the degrees-minutes-seconds columns its compilers authored.

How this record is known

7
Settled consensus
Cited as the accepted position of the discipline.
1
Open questions
Sourced statements that the answer is not currently known.

8 of 8 claims on this page cite at least one registered source. Counts describe how each statement is known, not how likely it is to be true.

What Lithoen records

Each claim states how it is known and cites its evidence.

Establisheda Revett-type copper deposit

How a source classifies it

The usgs sediment-hosted copper database classifies Rock Creek as a Revett-type copper deposit.

  • definition basis: Deposit-type field of the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, whose values are enumerated in the dataset itself.
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_CLASSIFICATION

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

Established0.81 wt%m Copper

Reported for this deposit

The usgs sediment-hosted copper database reports a copper grade of 0.81 weight percent for Rock Creek.

  • scope: depositAverage
  • definition basis: Grade as the compilation reports it for this deposit.
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_REPORTED

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

EstablishedQuartzite

Reported for this deposit

The rocks reported as hosting Rock Creek are Quartzite, as named for this deposit by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database.

  • precision note: The host lithologies are those the compilation names for this deposit. They are not inferred from a class description and not from a point falling inside a mapped polygon.
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_REPORTED

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

Establishedchalcocite; chalcopyrite; bornite; galena; native siver; pyrite; pyrrhotite

Reported for this deposit

The compilation reports 7 distinct minerals present at Rock Creek: chalcocite, chalcopyrite, bornite, galena, native siver, pyrite, pyrrhotite. It records presence only: no abundance, no paragenesis and no assay follows from it.

  • precision note: The compilation's mineral table holds 7 entries for this row, and the claim counts all 7 of them. The prose names 7 because a sentence of 7 mineral names is not readable; the count is stated so the list is never mistaken for the whole. Presence is not abundance, and the alphabetical order carries no paragenetic meaning.
  • source verbatim: The compilation writes “native siver” for this row. No mineral bears that name and the same database writes “native silver” elsewhere. The value carries the source’s spelling.
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_REPORTED

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

EstablishedRecorded as a deposit by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, record 493.

How a source classifies it

Rock Creek is recorded as a deposit because the USGS sediment-hosted copper database includes it, as record 493. The compilation is a database of sediment-hosted copper deposits and carries this row among them.

  • source record: usgs-sediment-hosted-copper-deposits-of-the-world record 493
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_CLASSIFICATION

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

Established71 g/t Silver

Reported for this deposit

The compilation reports a silver grade of 71.0 grams per tonne of ore for Rock Creek. The field is defined as the average grade of silver for the deposit, stated as grams per metric ton of ore.

  • scope: depositAverage
  • definition basis: Grade as the compilation reports it for this deposit.
  • precision note: Unit corrected in Phase 9. An earlier version published this figure as 71.0 weight percent, because the bulk ingestion mapped every grade column to weight percent. The compilation defines aggrd as “average grade of silver for the deposit, as grams per metric ton of ore” — copper and molybdenum are percentages in these files, silver and gold are grams per tonne. The published number was overstated by four orders of magnitude, and for several deposits it exceeded 100 percent, which is not a grade any rock can have.
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_REPORTED

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

Open question

Derived by Lithoen

Lithoen records no mineral-system interpretation for Rock Creek. The corpus models six mineral systems and sediment-hosted copper is not among them, so there is nothing here to interpret this deposit as. The absence is a gap in Lithoen's system layer, not a statement about the deposit.

  • precision note: Forcing this deposit into the nearest system the corpus happens to hold would assert a classification no source made.
  • assertion basis: LITHOEN_DERIVED

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

Established299 Mt

Reported for this deposit

The usgs sediment-hosted copper database reports an ore tonnage of 299.0 million tonnes for Rock Creek.

  • tonnage category: compilerTotalForModelling
  • definition basis: Ore tonnage as the compilation reports it for this deposit, compiled for grade-and-tonnage modelling rather than as a resource statement under a reporting code.
  • assertion basis: SOURCE_REPORTED

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence 2 sources, single source

Evidence: D.P. 2003 Primary authority

In the knowledge graph

Record last updated 2026-09-07. Corrections follow the published corrections policy; superseded claims are retained, never silently edited.