Miramar uncovers potential for diamonds, uranium in Bangemall

Miramar could have something sparkly on its hands after an ongoing review of historical data within its Bangemall projects in WA’s Gascoyne region turned up a diamond target.

The review had located a report identifying a cluster of lamproites, including one which reportedly contained 27 microdiamonds, within the Blue Bar prospect which was previously found to have the potential to host nickel-copper-platinum group elements mineralisation.

Despite this, no further work was carried out on the tenement, which was subsequently surrendered in 1998.

Miramar Resources (ASX:M2R) also identified a very large and high amplitude uranium anomaly which stretches over at least 100km of strike within several of its tenement applications.

This regional scale anomaly is located towards the northern edge of the Edmund Basin, at the contact with the older Ashburton Basin rocks, and apparently associated with the Jillawarra formation sediments where they have been intruded by later dolerite sills of the Kulkatharra suite.

Bangemall was originally identified through the same Geoscience Australia data maps used by Chalice Mining to target its world class Julimar Ni-Cu-PGE discovery.

“Proterozoic mobile belts can host many different deposit types, including diamonds,” executive chairman Allan Kelly said.

“The Capricorn Orogen is vastly underexplored compared to other mobile belts within Australia and, as a result, we continue to identify numerous highly prospective targets which we look forward to progressing once the relevant tenements are granted.”

Diamond occurrence

The diamondiferous lamproite uncovered by the review was described as being “365m across” and consisting mostly of “fine grained olivine lamproite with large xenoliths of mantle derived material” which had intruded through dolerite and dolomite.

While kimberlites – the main host rock for diamond – are restricted to stable Archaean cratons, lamproites are mostly only observed in Proterozoic mobile belts, like WA’s Capricorn Orogen.

Several 40kg samples were processed via wet sieving and concentrated, using both gravity and heavy liquids, before microscopic examination of the heavy mineral concentrate.

This extracted multiple diamond indicator minerals, including various garnets, picro-ilmenite and chrome diopside, along with the 27 microdiamonds.

Gold and platinoid grains were also recovered, from samples related to the adjacent dolerite sill.

While minimal information about the sampling locations was included in the report, sketch maps showed the locations of the diatremes in relation to topographic features while magnetic data appears to highlight the diamondiferous lamproite and, potentially, another unmapped diatreme.

Miramar plans to conduct a reconnaissance field trip to confirm the location of the reported diatremes and conduct check sampling of the diamondiferous diatreme and the additional circular magnetic anomaly.

This article was developed in collaboration with Miramar Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.