The mineralisation is modelled as the result of crystallisation and sulphide saturation in mush zones of the intrusion and concentration of precious metals in droplets of sulphides melt, followed by transportation to the floor of the magma chamber. At the floor, sulphides reacted with residing Fe-rich melt.
Re-dissolved precious metals were subsequently redistributed into a complex syn-magmatic structure. The structure of the mineralisation is based on identification and correlations of lithological, geochemical and mineralogical markers in up to forty-one drill cores and additional chip-line profiles.
The mineralogy is in central parts of the intrusion dominated by two minerals that compare in structure, tetra auricupride (AuCu) and skaergaardite (PdCu). The Skaergaard intrusion is the type locality for skaergaardite (PdCu) as well as nielsenite (PdCu3). The precious metal parageneses exhibit lateral variations with PGE sulphides on the western margin towards the Archaean basement and palladium plumbites (zvyagintsevite, Pd3Pb) on the margin to the contemporaneous Palaeogene lavas.
Detailed knowledge of the precious metal mineralogy is of major importance for the development of exploitation methods.