True North Copper Limited (ASX:TNC) (True North, TNC or the Company) is pleased to announce results from a systematic rock chip sampling campaign at the Aquila and Ivena North prospects, part of its 100% owned Mt Oxide Project, located 140km north of Mt Isa in Queensland.
HIGHLIGHTS
Assay results received from a successful rock chip sampling program at the Aquila and Ivena North prospects, part of TNC’s 100% owned Mt Oxide Project in Queensland.Aquila and Ivena North are both part of the larger Dorman Fault Mineral System, a +10km long trend that hosts the Vero Cu-Ag-Co Resource and the Camp Gossans Prospect.At Aquila, sampling has highlighted six zones of anomalous Cu, Co & As associated with multiple gossanous breccia structures up to 30m wide.Aquila B Trend: +180m long and +30m wide Cu +/- Co-As-Ag within a 440m long fault breccia with visible copper oxide mineralisation. The trend includes rock chip channels returning 3.6m @ 0.49% Cu with a peak assay of 0.94% Cu.Aquila A Trend: +20m long and up to 12m wide Cu-As-Sb anomalous zone within +210m strike of hematite altered hydrothermal breccias, returning up to 0.05% Cu and 12.7g/t Ag and anomalous pathfinders.Aquila D Trend: +100m long and up to 4m wide Cu-Co trend associated with a historical prospecting pit with strong copper oxide mineralisation, and a peak assay of 0.87% Cu.At Ivena North, sampling has identified Cu, Co & As trends within two geochemically anomalous zones from multiple gossanous breccia structures that are up to 25m wide.Ivena North A Trend – +130m long and up to 15m wide Cu-Co-As trend within a +580m strike of hydrothermal breccia and gossans that returned assays up to 1.38% Cu and anomalous As +/- Ag-Sb-Bi-Mo.A combined 680m strike length of mapped hematite silica gossans remains under-sampled between the Aquila and Mt Gordon Prospects.Rock chip results will be integrated with ongoing mapping and results from the Queensland Government-funded MIMDAS IP and MT survey, which is currently underway along the Dorman Fault Mineral System.
The rock chip sampling program has successfully identified new broad zones of strongly anomalous copper and pathfinder elements. The copper grades and pathfinder anomalism returned in the samples are at levels consistent with other outcropping leached gossans associated with historic drill discoveries in the region.
The Ivena North and Aquila prospects are located along strike northwest of the high-grade Vero Cu-Ag-Co resource (Vero). Both prospects are high priority exploration targets for TNC, with a MIMDAS Induced Polarisation (IP) and Magnetotellurics (MT) geophysical survey continuing at Mt Oxide to test for geophysical anomalies coincident with outcropping geochemically anomalous gossans1, 3.
COMMENT
True North Copper’s Managing Director, Bevan Jones said:
“Our exploration team has been working hard to systematically map and sample the +10km Dorman fault trend at Mt Oxide. Multiple gossans have been identified, and rock chip results from the gossans are revealing large areas of wider and stronger mineralisation on which to focus our future exploration work, including the ongoing MIMDAS geophysical survey.
We are also remobilising the on-ground team to systematically collect additional rock chip samples over the newly discovered Black Marlin and Rhea structures. Further geophysical results are filtering through, and updates will be released soon. We are potentially building a significant district at Mt Oxide with multiple high priority targets which have never been drilled. Our next steps include prioritisation of these targets, designing and planning upcoming drill programs, and securing the necessary permits for on-ground access.”
Summary of Results
During Q4 CY23, TNC’s Discovery Team initiated a prospectivity analysis of the Dorman Fault Mineral System, host to the Vero Cu-Ag-Co Resource (Vero) (15.03Mt @ 1.46% Cu and 10.59g/t Ag M, I & I, refer Table 1)4. Geological and structural mapping delineated a +10km highly prospective corridor of intermittently outcropping gossanous and silica breccias with no drilling, surface sampling or effective geophysics. Since completion of this work, TNC has collected 388 rock chip samples, including 243.5m of rock chip channel samples at the Ivena North and Aquila Prospects where TNC is currently acquiring MIMDAS IP and MT as part of its Queensland Government Collaborative Exploration Initiative (CEI) grant3.
Analysis of the assay results has highlighted eight high priority geochemically anomalous zones within the larger, structurally complex footprint at both prospects with two of these zones remaining open to the north. These anomalies have similar pathfinder geochemical signatures and are within the order of magnitude of the results from Camp Gossans4 south of Vero, which are considered analogous to the leached gossan outcrops at the Esperanza South deposit4.
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