SONORA GOLD PROPERTY
Proximity Mines
The Caborca gold belt is a large gold metallogenic province located in the North American Cordillera that hosts orogenic gold-bearing quartz veins and extends from northwestern Mexico into the southwestern United States.
The Caborca gold belt hosts several operating mines including the San Francisco gold mine, where over one million ounces of gold have been mined to date. The San Francisco mine is located 18 kilometres north of the Sonora gold project and hosts gold mineralization that can be linked to the Mojave fault, a district-scale structure that is mapped from the Mojave Desert in California, across northern Mexico, to the Gulf of Mexico.
SONORA PROPERTY
Location
The project area is cut by the district-scale north-northwest-trending Mojave fault. Geologists believe this large structural feature controls the distribution of mineralization in the region. Recent field observations indicate the project area is favourable for structurally controlled epithermal deposits in the north and iron-oxide-copper-gold replacement deposits in the central part of the concession adjacent to the Mojave fault.
Geology
The oldest rocks in the mining claims correspond to small and thin pendants of granitic-gneiss of Middle Proterozoic in age, and pendants or caps of Lower Jurassic sandstones and limestones. Upper Cretaceous volcanic and volcano-sedimentary sequences, composed of andesites, andesite-dacites and related sandstones are present along the east side of the claim block. The entire lithological package is intruded by a Late Cretaceous batholith associated with the Laramide orogeny. This igneous rock is composed of granite-granodiorite. Diorite porphyry and aplitic dikes are noted along with numerous aplitic-rhyolitic-andesitic dikes. The felsic dikes generally have a dominant north-south bearing, while the intermediate dikes have a general east-west preferential direction.
Most of the metaliferous mineralization in the area is found in veins of 1 to 2 meters in thickness and strongly associated with regional dikes; generally, the veins are located on the flanks of these dikes.
There are several isolated skarn-type deposits on the property, located in the sedimentary sequences affected by the intrusive units, the remnants of these skarn mineralized bodies are presented as floating and/or hanging roof pendants.
The vein-type structures are formed of quartz + iron oxide (hematite-limonite) + manganese oxide, in addition to primary sulfides, such as pyrite and trace amounts of chalcopyrite, there are abundant copper minerals such as malachite, chrysocolla, and azurite, along with traces of specularite and magnetite.
Some veins show quartz associated with barite. The skarn-type showings have garnet + chlorite + epidote + quartz + calcite present in their composition, as well as a trace of siderite and magnetite with occasional galena crystals. In the vein and breccia type deposits, the main alterations are silicification in the host rocks and dikes, in addition to oxidation to a lesser extent and occasionally the presence of sericite-clays, mainly in granitic rocks. Alteration in the skarn is represented by intense oxidation associated with mineralization and propylitization in the host rock.
Samples have returned results for gold, silver and copper with best samples yielding 31.4/t Au, 358g/t Ag and 12.2% Cu.