The Bushveld Complex in South Africa is the world’s largest mafic layered intrusion by far and it contains more than three-fourths of the global reserves of platinum group elements (PGE) and more than one-third of global chromium reserves. All of the chromium and much of the platinum are hosted by layers of chromitite in the so-called Critical Zone, a stratigraphic interval of variable thickness (ca 1000 to 1500 m) in the lower third of the 7000-8000 meter-thick intrusion. The data presented herein result from the German-South African project AMREP (Applied Mineralogy for Research Efficiency of Platinum Metals), which investigated the feasibility of extracting PGE from chromitite layers that were mined for chromium at the Thaba Cr mine. The data comprise in-situ mineral analyses by electron microprobe (EPMA data), whole-rock chemical analyses of the platinum-group element concentration (PGE assay data), and microtextural analysis of thin sections to determine the grain size and size distribution of chromite in the layers (CSD data: crystal size distribution).
Core samples have been taken for complementary laboratory seismic measurements and mineralogical analyses on whole rock core from the COSC-1 borehole, Sweden (UTM 63.3124, 13.5259). These samples were used to provide and characterize the seismic properties (i.e., seismic velocities and anisotropy) of the drilled rocks from the highly metamorphosed and deformed Seve Nappe Complex, an orogenic thrust zone in the Scandinavian Caledonides, in central Sweden.
The laboratory seismic and mineralogical analysis in general comprises three distinct measurements (i.e., data sets), which will be described in detail in the following subsections: (1) P- and S-wave laboratory seismic measurements on three perpendicular core plugs, under different confining (hydrostatic) pressure conditions (10 + 6 samples), (2) Bulk mineralogy of core plugs using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and mineral chemical composition measurements using an electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA, here microprobe), on 10 thin sections and (3) Microstructural investigations based on electron-backscatter diffraction analyses on 5 thin sections.
The laboratory seismic measurements were initially conducted on 6 samples by Wenning et al. (2016) and extended by another 10 samples by Kästner et al. (2020). Despite these authors were using the same sensor setup, the provided data files may differ due to individual acquisition parameters. Where different acquisition, processing, or calibration parameters are used this is indicated in the text using the abbreviations FK and QW referring to each examiner and their related sample measurements. International Geo Sample Numbers (IGSN) are provided for each core sample in the complete sample data table.