RE:800 lb Gorilla : No fine grained gold: Kangaroo pasture?Bilbo,
Comments in your post:
Comment: I don't understand why efforts are not being made to sample (bulk sample or otherwise) different locations to get an idea about the continuity of the nuggets across their vast land holdings. Why are they focussing on two spots already known to contain nuggets?
Answer: Novo doesn't have the permits in place yet that allows them to do that at this time.
Comment: It is significant to me that there no separate fine grained gold to be found in the trenching samples (excepting that which is found in a halo around the nuggets)
Answer: QH stated that it appears that "most" of the fine grain gold is around the nuggets, not all. The grams per ton from the four parts of the bulk sample are:
Subsample #1 Sorted Concentrate 3393 gpt
Subsample #2 Sorted Concentrate 2079 gpt
Subsample #1 Sorted Tailings 15.1 gpt
Subsample #2 Sorted Tailings 8.4 gpt
The Sorted Tailings were separated out by the Steinert machine as no nuggets were present in the those 6 centimeter chucks of conglomerate. If fine gold had been evenly distributed in the chunks without nuggets between subsamples that would have supported a wide spread fine gold component, however the Sorted Tailings gpt vary with the in proportion to the nuggets gpt in the Sorted Concentrate thus lending support to QH's statement. However, look at the pictures of gold in the 3 grab samples from trenches in a past NR. Some gold is very fine, some gold is in the form of very smaill nuggets, and some gold is very small nuggets that have clumped together in the pan. Grab samples would not have large nuggets in them so IMO some or most of this gold is not from nugget halos. How much is anybody's guess but there is some fine grain gold. As a final point, if just the nuggets and halo's average 67gpt who cares if fine grain gold is present.
Comment:
If the nuggets in the Pilbara are associated with precipitation onto bacterial mats, then the distribution of the nuggets could be limited to those areas where bacterial mats were growing, which perhaps was only in certain shallow areas near shore or river deltas only and not necessarily across the whole Pilbara. This would limit the distribution of nuggets quite drastically and put a hole in Quinton's theory of gold being widely distributed across Novo's land holdings.
Answer: No Kidding?
Comment:
It is also Quinton's theory that at the Witwatersrand the fine grained gold was precipitated out of the ocean water. If the Pilbara deposit is precipitated out of ocean water, then where is the fine grained gold?
Answer: At Beaton's Creek and the CRA hole both many kilometers to the east.
Purdy, Comet Wells, KAI, and De Gray in 3 areas have all found watermelon seed nuggets which are unique. Maybe the nuggets do or don't extend very far to the east but they certainly extend from north to south. Maybe there are nuggets in the CRA conglomerates but the 2 1/4 inch drill didn't hit any but picked up some of the halo's. Maybe, maybe, maybe. They're finding gold whereever the conglomerates stick out from beneath the Mt. Roe basalt over a huge area that's good enough for me that this is something big.