What you are looking at is one of the most fascinating geologic features in Russia.
Known as the Kondyor Massif, it is a 5.1 mile wide ring structure which is essentially a
perfect circle that towers as much as 2000 feet or 610 meters above the surrounding landscape.
Typically, when a large circular rock formation is found it is generally one of three things.
These three things are large calderas such as the Okmok volcano and caldera in Alaska,
impact craters such as the Wolfe Creek Crater in Australia, or very large kimberlite pipes
such as the Buell Park kimberlite pipe in Arizona.
Yet, despite its almost perfect circular shape, the massive Kondyor Massif is none of these
aforementioned features.
To make things even weirder, this feature contains massive concentrations of one of
the planet's rarest and most valuable elements, platinum.
Every year, approximately 5 tons of platinum is mined from streams and riverbeds leading
out of the Konyor Massif, worth a combined total at current prices of around $160 million
U.S. dollars.
And, it is not simply platinum which comes out of these rocks.
Large concentrations of gold, iron, and chromium are found here along with lesser concentrations
of rare earth elements, titanium, and lead.
Although this massive feature is instead a type of igneous intrusion, this alone does
not explain why it contains so much platinum.
As, the Kondyor Massif and its platinum can be linked to an ancient planet wide extinction
event.
The mass extinction event in question was known as the Permian Triassic extinction event,
or "The Great Dying" where the vast oceans became increasingly acidic, and 90% of all
life in the oceans was wiped out.
The culprit of this extinction was the Siberian Traps flood basalts, where a massive province
of basaltic lava erupted across a timespan of 200,000 years, going on to quickly coat
5 million square kilometers in up to 3 kilometers thick of volcanic rock.
This flood of basaltic lava was caused by the figurative head of a very hot region of
the mantle in what is termed a mantle hotspot reaching the surface, causing large volumes
of molten rock to intrude into the crust.
This mantle plume at the time of this extinction event was fairly large, and also caused effects
just outside of the edge of its plume head.
There, like at the area which would eventually become the Kondyor Massif, material deep in
the mantle was funneled upwards due to the general motion of the hotspot, allowing for
platinum rich molten rock to be pulled upwards until it eventually began intruding into the
continental crust.
As a massive volume of dunite composition magma intruded into the crust, it moved at
a high speed upwards due to the the fact it contained a substantial volume of volatile
materials aka abundant gasses.
Because of this fact, the intrusion formed a somewhat circular shape in a manner which
mirrored a kimberlite pipe.
As this pipe of material continued, it began to loose speed.
It then eventually stopped far below the surface, and began to solidify.
Within this magma, chromite rich pockets of material developed in boulder sized masses
of rock, which abundant platinum mineralization largely crystallized within.
Thus, once the intrusion had settled, what remained was a solidified circular pluton.
This pluton was largely surrounded by a highly erosion resistant gneiss layer.
More than 100 million years later, the path of least resistance was used by another less
gas rich igneous intrusion which would go on to solidify in the southwest section of
the earlier intrusion 131 million years ago which remobilized some of the platinum.
The overlying rock was subsequently eroded away, with the dunite eroding at a faster
rate than the gneiss.
This eventually left behind a ring shaped structure, representing the outer edge of
the ancient pluton.
As additional material eroded away, some platinum rich ore and nuggets came to be emplaced on
the outer edges of streams and in sediment where it is mined today.
As a final note, a feature somewhat similar to Kondyor Massif can be found more than 500
kilometers to the west at the smaller Inagli Massif.
Also, for common sense purposes I am saying to please not collect or mine platinum or
other material in these massifs unless you are specifically hired to do so by a company
which has rights to mine either of these two regions.
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