Paradox Basin Uranium-Vanadium Deposits: History and Significance of Geological Research

This article describes and analyzes the history of research into the origins of the uranium-vanadium(-radium) deposits of the Paradox Basin. For several decades after their discovery in 1881, research was desultory and almost entirely descriptive, fluctuating with demand for vanadium and radium. Systematic geologic descriptions, accumulated between 1910 and 1950, supported rapid progress during a government-backed surge of research in the 1950s, when uranium was the chief commodity of interest. Most of the major theoretical innovations date from this decade, including the use of concepts from solution chemistry to identify the conditions and constrain the processes of deposit formation and alteration. Research from this time was highly influential in geology at large, providing the model for sandstone-hosted uranium deposits worldwide and numerous new minerals and mineral structures. After about 1960, mine production remained high but research dwindled, and most new advances were to the details of the hydrothermal model of ore formation rather than its core concepts. By the end of the 1960s, the deposits were understood to have formed at the mixing interface of an oxidized, metal-bearing water with a reducing fluid of debated origin. Research was desultory over the ensuing decades; the source of the metals and the nature of the chemicals constituting the trap were not clearly established. They remain questions today, as do factors like the relationship between ore mineralization and the geologic history of the basin. Analysis of the research history identifies the introduction of solution-chemistry concepts (Pourbaix diagrams) as the most important innovation contributing to progress, with advances in analytical technology playing a lesser role and computers contributing little. A solid foundation of field observations has been necessary to all advances. The patterns of research compared to larger national/global events suggest that geological research makes the most progress when conducted in the framework of a long-term, sustained program independent of commodity prices, and when theories are constructed only after large amounts of observational data are present. The current research focus has shifted from the deposits’ characteristics and metallogenesis to what insights they can provide into basinal fluid systems and other basinwide events.