Kanellopoulos and six co-authors, reported in 2018 that Native iron has been identified in an active thermogenic travertine deposit, located at Ilia area (Euboea Island, Greece). The deposit is forming around a hot spring, which is part of a large active metallogenetic hydrothermal system depositing ore-bearing travertines. The native iron occurs in two shapes: nodules with diameter 0.4 and 0.45 cm and angular grains, with length up to tens of μm.
The travertine laminae around the spherical/ovoid nodules grow smoothly around the nodules; the angular grains are trapped inside the pores of the travertine. Their mineral-chemistry is ultra-pure, containing, other than Fe, only Mn (0.34-0.38 wt%) and Ni (≤0.05 wt%). After evaluating all the possible environments where native iron has been reported up today, the authors support the hypothesis that the native iron at Ilia is remobilized from ophiolitic rocks, originated initially from reducing fluids, which deposited it in the past during serpentinization processes and now it is remobilized and transferred from the hydrothermal fluid and syngenetically enclosed as clastic grains within the active thermogenic travertine. The native iron mineral-chemistry, morphology and the presence of other mineral phase at the same thermogenic travertine, which have been documented in ophiolitic rocks at which native iron is present, support this hypothesis.
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