Do you remember the Aurelian Resources discovery of the Fruta del Norte epithermal gold deposit in the Ecuadorian Andes in 2006? The hidden under overburden, gold discovery in the South American jungle, of 13 million ounces of gold was the most exciting gold discovery story for the last decade. The stock price of Aurelian Resources soared from 60 cents to over $40 over the course of half a year of spectacular drilling results. Aurelian was eventually merged together with Kinross Gold Corporation (KGC) in 2008 for value of $1.2 billion USD. The author has a particular interest in this type of epithermal precious metal deposits.
Secret to Finding
What is the secret behind a company finding this type of spectacular gold deposit? Well, Dirk Masuch, a Nevada gold investor, postulates that it is result of methodical exploration tactics. He says the signs were all there on the company website, detailing progress in unravelling the geological story. The first step was selecting the prospect area and sampling the streams for indicators of gold bearing minerals. Once something was found, then more detailed sampling followed to try and narrow down the source upstream. The rock types and mineral traces are analyzed. The presence of gold indicator minerals of arsenic and mercury in the local rocks is very important. Also the discovery and recognition of the local geological fault structures becomes critical as the controls for possible precious mineral deposits. Then remote sensing technologies are applied to try and understand the underlying geology. Finally after coordinating all the results and selection of targets, drilling is initiated. All this information was available to prospective investors in the Aurelian company website.
Epithermal Gold Geology
There is a key word mentioned in the first paragraph of this article, "epithermal." To this author's understanding, epithermal refers to
