Dreadnought Resources (ASX:DRE) continues to expand its Star of Mangaroon prospect in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region, with fresh soil sampling work highlighting a potential exploration area of roughly 12km-by-5km.
The company says the ‘camp-scale’ prospect, which lies within the wider Mangaroon Project, was originally thought to be a 10km-long shear zone with historical workings but has now been shown to host ‘strong’ gold-in-soil and pathfinder anomalism.
Dreadnought’s recent infill soil survey highlighted the unmined Tiger region of the prospect as one of the strongest anomalies in the region, spanning more than 1km in strike with a core of 500m-by-400m of gold and pathfinders.
With a wide-space soil survey extending Star of Mangaroon by around 3km, Dreadnought says it’s identified 6 new ‘strong’ and ‘broad-scale’ anomalies in the region.
Looking ahead, the company now plans to take on some more ground-based follow-up sampling and mapping to outline drill targets in April 2024, with results from more soil and regional stream surveys expected before the end of February.
Dreadnought Managing Director Dean Tuck says the results of the company’s ‘systematic exploration’ over its Mangaroon gold position continue to showcase the area’s potential for ‘significant’ gold discoveries.
“The expanding gold-in-soil and pathfinder footprint of the Star of Mangaroon camp-scale gold prospect continues to grow and remains open in several directions.
An intensive re-interpretation of the geology of the area on the back of our detailed airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys, combined with the learnings from our target generation and target testing work across the project, has identified over 12 targets.”
Tuck adds that with the company’s new structural interpretation, it is seeing ‘strong evidence’ of an ‘intrusion-related gold system with an orogenic overprint’; a similar system as to what one might find in the Tintina Gold Belt in Alaska and Canada.
“This is groundbreaking work in this underexplored region and will assist greatly in target definition and testing throughout 2024,” Tuck says.
Dreadnought says the Star of Mangaroon prospect was initially thought to be centred around the historical Star of Mangaroon gold mine and the historical workings that run for around 12km through the area.
However, soil surveys completed by the company in 2023 showed gold and pathfinder anomalies ‘well away’ from the originally defined gold trend.
This prompted further target definition soil surveys, which have continued to highlight the gold and pathfinder anomalies, expanding the footprint of the prospect and enhancing the region’s prospectivity.
Dreadnought’s April mapping and surface sampling work will precede some potential drilling across the area.
Write to Joshua Smith at Mining.com.au
Images: Dreadnought Resources
