Overview

• Curtin University researchers, with University of Göttingen collaborators, dated Aileron Province carbonatites to roughly 830–820 million years ago.
• As Rodinia began to rift, carbonatite magmas migrated from the deep mantle through pre-existing fault zones to reach the crust.
• The rocks host significant concentrations of niobium, a critical metal used in high-strength steels and some clean-energy technologies.
• Multi-method geochronology and high-resolution imaging disentangled more than 500 million years of overprinting to isolate the original magmatic event.
• The peer-reviewed findings appear in Geological Magazine, detailing the deposit’s formation history and its implications for mineral exploration.