Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold delves into the origins of gold to try to understand TriStar Gold’s Witwatersrand-type deposit in Brazil.
I’ve been writing about Novo Resources Corp. (NVO:TSX.V; NSRPF:OTCQX) and their Witwatersrand lookalike deposit for over five years. Well, Quinton Hennigh is associated with another Wits lookalike, this time in Brazil.
It wouldn’t be the first time I wrote about a Wits deposit in Brazil, I was writing about Desert Sun in 2003 when they had a $7 million dollar market cap, well before they were taken over by Yamana for $500 million in 2006.
Yamana’s Jacobina deposit is the same age as another similar type deposit in Brazil named Castelos de Sohnos owned by TriStar Gold Inc. (TSG:TSX.V). In both deposits free gold of unusually high purity is found in reefs of quartz cobbles. While the “experts” call these deposits “paleoplacer,” they aren’t placer. All “paleo” means is old so “paleoplacer” simply means old placer.
Since the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa during 1886, experts have debated the origin of the gold there. In general there have been two camps. One camp holds that there were giant mountain ranges containing veins of rich gold and as the earth aged, rain and erosion caused the gold to be released from the rock and washed downstream. That’s the “paleoplacer” group.
The other group believes that in a way similar to many gold deposits today, gold deep in the earth is taken into solution in the presence of hot, caustic solutions of sodium and chloride and brought to the surface through fissures in the ground. When either the chemistry or pressure or temperature of the water changes, the gold precipitates out forming gold deposits. These systems are …read more