Special Report: Explorer Marmota has discovered visible gold at a project close to a mine that has produced $1.7 billion worth of the precious metal.

The shares gained 12.5 per cent to 1.8c on Thursday.

Marmota’s Aurora Tank site is just 50km north-east of WPG’s (ASX:WPG) Challenger Gold Mine in South Australia — where more than 1.2 million ounces of gold have been dug up since 2002. At current prices that’s worth more than $1.7 billion.

Marmota is focused on its highly prospective tenements in the Gawler Craton — an under-explored, 6000 sq km area in South Australia’s Woomera Prohibited Area — a military missile-testing, pastoral and mining region in the State’s north-west.

The explorer (ASX:MEU) has just completed testing 14 samples from diamond drilling at the project — and found very exciting results.

Ten of the samples showed results ranging from 5.9 grams per tonne of gold to 43 grams per tonne.

Anything over 5 grams per tonne is considered high grade.

A technique known as reflected light microscopy revealed visible gold in eight of the ten high-grade samples.

The gold is mainly hosted in hydrothermal vein quartz and the gold is therefore regarded as primary mineralisation with potential to follow it to depth.

Here are some images of the samples released today by Marmota:

A sample from Aurora Tank shows a cluster of small gold grains in a vein of clay in massive vein quartz. Pic: Marmota

 

Micro nuggety gold sampels shown in vein quartz from Marmota's latest samples.
This sample shows micro nuggety gold sampels shown in vein quartz from Marmota’s Aurora Tank.

Marmota has now carried out several successful drilling programs at Aurora Tank.

The company — which also has copper and uranium interests — raised $1 million in December and is now examining a number of avenues to bring Aurora Tank into production.

Marmota recently signed a strategic alliance with Challenger Mine owner WPG to investigate co-operation on the Aurora Tank project and treating Marmota’s gold ore through the Challenger plant.

“The coming months should be very interesting for both the company and our shareholders,” Marmota’s chairman, Dr Colin Rose recently told investors.

 

This special report is brought to you by Marmota.

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