RE: EKOMIAK vs ArgyleCoolshivers,
the leadbetter diamonds are predominantly gem or near-gem quality......no preponderance of boart here as in Argyle.... ryder is on the record as stating that the quebec conglomerates (they are not Lamproites by the way, but may be derived from lamproites) are of similar geological signatures as leadbetter....
having said all that leadbetter is predominantly clear white stones (63%) with 16% yellow, 10% amber and 11% a mix of other colours - very different colour characteristics than ekomiak5 and for that matter the adjacent mori property.
actually Mori vs ekomiak is a good comparison....
go and have a look at how radiant the canary yellow micros from Mori are....as you know mtx and dor have 30% of this project
mori - 52.4% coloured stones
26.8% brown
14% grey
5.5% yellow
5.1% green
0.8% orange
0.1% purple
0.1% amber
0.1% black
a single pink diamond was also recovered (press release June 25th 2008)
DOR's 100% owned PEM 1404 property is far less "colourful" than its neighbour Ekomiak 5 (and Mori for that matter). It contained 1286 diamonds from a 35 kilogram grab sample.... however only 26 of them were coloured including 6 pink, 14 amber and 6 yellow...... Pem is adjacent to Ekomiak 5....
on the combined Pem and ekomiak 5 properties the diamondiferous conglomerates outcrop for a distance of 15km along strike and up to 1km in width....... the combined PEM/Ekomiak 5 property would appear to have a lot in common to the combined leadbetter/mori property
its an enigma wrapped in a conundrum which could yet throw up some corundum.... as Leadbetter has done....
DOR/MTX are essentially writing the manual for conglomerate diamond exploration...... theres no point bringing any kimberlitic/lamproitic experience or bias to bear on the project as its completely irrelevant in the context of conglomerates...
To aid your thinking, the deposit model currently proposed for leadbetter is that of an Archean debris flow proximal to a diamond source rock (kimberlite or lamproite)
the best explanation I have seen is the Paleoplacer model.....
The paleoplacer model
https://www.mrnf.gouv.qc.ca/english/mines/quebec-mines/2004-06/apple-modele.jsp
Paleoplacers contain significant amounts of gold or uranium. The best example is the colossal Witwatersrand Au-U district in South Africa, from which more than 48,670 tonnes of gold and 165,000 tonnes of U3O8 have been extracted between 1886 and 2000, i.e. roughly 40% of all the gold extracted since the early days of mankind (Frimmel and Minter, 2002). What is less well known however is that some paleoplacers also contain important concentrations of detrital diamond, similar to recent placer deposits in Namibia, Brazil or India. Although the productivity of these recent or older deposits is generally lower than that of primary deposits (kimberlites or lamproites), their economic impact is fairly significant given the superior quality of recovered diamonds.
In his review of diamond-bearing paleoplacers, Konstantinovskii (2003) noticed a discontinuous and irregular increase in the number of these paleoplacers through geological time, a growing trend that may be related to an increase in kimberlitic volcanism through time. This author reports the existence of a few Archean diamond-bearing paleoplacers, namely those in the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa and Nullagine in Western Australia. Prior to the development of modern crushing methods, diamonds were reportedly recovered from the processing of Witwatersrand gold ore (Roscoe and Minter, 1993). Several stones of interesting size and quality were also recovered from uraniferous quartz pebble conglomerates in the Nullagine area, in the Pilbara craton of Australia. In both cases, the primary source of diamonds (kimberlites) is unknown and has probably been completely eroded.
hope this helps,
P