The Escondida porphyry copper deposit and its satellites are the source of ore for the world's current largest copper mine, with an installed capacity of 1.2 Mt of fine copper per annum. The published ore reserve + mineral resource at Escondida and the satellite Escondida Norte deposits at the end of 2004 totalled 2.88 Gt @ 1.13% Cu, or 10.11 Gt @ 0.70% Cu when lower grade leach and oxide ores are included. Escondida was discovered in 1981 as the culmination of an exploration program initiated in 1978. This program, the Atacama Project, was specifically targeted at locating supergene enriched porphyry copper ore within the 500 km interval between Chuquicamata and El Salvador, in the established porphyry copper belt of northern Chile.

The Analyzing Development Issues (ADI) team and research participants express their gratitude to the Bunong indigenous people in the Mondulkiri villages of Gati and Pou Rapeth for sharing with us their experiences of interacting with the corporate mining companies in their midst. The researchers would also like to thank the local authorities and mining officials in Mondulkiri who cooperated in this study. Tien Hien Tang and Vaing Samrith from Development and Partnership in Action (DPA) assisted the fieldwork in Gati village in Keo Seima district.

Adelaide Supergroup and Marino Group are proposed to replace the terms Adelaide System and Marinoan Series.
Arising from the discovery of Lower Cambrian fossils in metamorphosed rocks at Delamere a conformable sequence from the Precambrian Tapley Hill Slate to the Cambrian Carrickalinga Head formation has been established for the Delamere region.

More than fifty significant porphyry copper deposits are distributed over a 2000 km interval within the U.S. and Mexico, following a trend subparallel to the southwestern margin of North America. These include giant supergene enriched deposits such as those at Morenci in Arizona (4.7 Gt @ 0.52% Cu) and Cananea (7.1 Gt @ 0.42% Cu) in Sonora, Mexico.

The porphyry copper deposits of southwestern North America were developed in a continental margin cratonic setting, above a subduction zone that was active largely from the Early Mesozoic to the Late-Tertiary. While significant ore deposits of Jurassic to Mid-Tertiary age are known, the majority were emplaced between 72 and 55 Ma, during the peak of magmatic activity along the Laramide Arc. Laramide magmatism and crustal shortening ceased by around 50 Ma, in the mid Eocene, to be followed by a 15 m.y. period of magmatic quiescence, erosion and localised continental sedimentation, the Eocene Epeirogeny. This was succeeded from around 35 Ma by the Mid-Tertiary Orogeny, which persisted through the Oligocene to the Early Miocene and resulted in renewed, widespread volcanism, and by crustal extension. Extension was characterised by the development of listric, detachment and strike-slip faults, associated listric tilting of up to 60° or more, and the uplift and exposure of metamorphic core complexes. During the Mid- to Late-Miocene, between 18 and 10 Ma, the nature of tectonism in the region changed through a period of transition, from an extensional to a block faulted 'basin and range' regime which persists locally to the present. The typical basins are grabens or half grabens, with structural relief between the base of sediment filled basins and the crests of the adjacent ranges of from 2 to 4 km, and sometimes more than 6 km.