Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - August 3, 2017) - Minaurum Gold, Inc. (TSXV: MGG) ("Minaurum") is pleased to announce the commencement of a minimum 5,000-m diamond drill program at its Alamos Silver Project in Sonora, Mexico. The drilling will focus on seven major mineralized vein structures identified by Minaurum's 2016-2017 sampling and mapping program. Three of these were the source of Alamos district's historic 200 Moz high-grade silver production and may still contain overlooked silver shoots (See News Releases dated May 24, 2017 and March 16, 2017). The remaining veins lie in structurally down-dropped blocks and are exposed at a high level. Although they locally carry very high silver grades (>3000 g/t) none have seen significant production nor have they been drilled. Most of the drilling is also designed to cut completely blind veins that may exist at relatively shallow depths between the exposed veins. The target areas are shown on the accompanying map of the Alamos project area.
Drilling will be done with man-portable equipment and will begin with; mineralized structures parallel to and down dip of the previously mined La Quintera and Promontorio veins, the 500m- long previously unexplored "Gap" zone located between them, and targets below the 700m-long, 25-m-wide bulk-tonnage Minas Nuevas target.
Drilling will then move to the "blind" targets identified in the essentially untouched "piano-key" style down-thrown blocks lying to the east and west of the central upthrown La Quintera-Promontorio Block (See News Release dated March 16, 2017). As these veins are exposed at a level at or above the "top-out" of productive vein mineralization, their entire vertical development from upper Bonanza Zone to deep Root Zone may be intact.
"We are excited to begin the first systematic drill program in this historic district. Starting with a number of strong targets on the primary veins that historically produced an estimated 200 Moz silver, we especially look forward to drilling what could be virgin high-grade veins in the down-dropped fault blocks running parallel to the primary veins," stated Darrell Rader, President and CEO. "Our piano-key structural model indicates that these vein targets are exposed at such a high level that the historical miners did not recognize their potential. If our model is correct, we could dramatically expand the district's mineralized footprint."
Individual Target Areas
Drilling at La Quintera will focus on seeking unmined structures parallel to and down-dip of existing mine workings. Historical mining records indicate silver mineralization up to 1200 g/Ag and 8% Cu from the Quintera Vein.
At Promontorio, the vein was developed over a strike length of 800m and locally to depths of 200m below the adit level. Base-metal and gold values are consistently higher at Promontorio than at the other targets. Based on mapping and sampling, the immediate drill target is the down-dip projection of historically mined mineralization and possible blind mineralized structures in the hanging wall of the principal vein.
The "Gap" area is the 500-m long zone lying between the La Quintera and Promontorio zones. The Gap contains numerous veins up to 1m wide reporting up to 264 g/t Ag, but there are no significant workings on this target. Drilling will seek structural enlargements of the vein that are not apparent at the surface but which may have width and grade like that seen along strike in both directions.
The 700m-long Minas Nuevas zone lies at the northernmost end of the district. It contains numerous mined and unmined vein strands and intervening stockwork mineralization with combined widths locally reaching 25m. Drilling will target both the near-surface stockwork bulk-tonnage potential as well as potential high-grade veins at depth.