The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Goldspot, New Found cut 19m of 93 g/t gold in Newfoundland Metal Tech News Weekly Edition – February 5, 2020
The abundant visible gold in this core was tapped nearly 100 meters underground in the first hole GoldSpot Discoveries artificial intelligence drill targeting at New Found Gold's Queensway project in eastern Canada.
Machine learning is emerging as a tool for discovering increasingly elusive deposits of gold and other metals.
Artificial intelligence and real boots-on-the ground geological investigations have resulted in a significant new high-grade gold discovery at New Found Gold Corp.'s Queensway project in Newfoundland.
Formerly known as the Linear project, Queensway is a massive land package covering at least 17 known high-grade gold showings along a roughly 55-mile- (88 kilometers) stretch of the Central Newfoundland Gold Belt.
To help identify the best drill targets across this roughly 173,000-acre (70,000 hectares) property, New Found entered into a partnership early last year with GoldSpot Discoveries Corp., a pioneer in the use of AI and machine learning for mineral exploration.
The first AI-targeted hole at Queensway, NFGC-19-01, cut 19 meters averaging 92.86 grams (2.99 ounces) per metric ton gold from a depth of 96 meters, including six meters of 285.2 g/t (9.17 oz/t) gold. Based on the angle of drilling, the true widths of these intercepts is estimated to be about 70 percent of the drilled width.
These are astonishingly high grades across mineable widths!
This is the first of 10 reconnaissance holes New Found drilled across Queensway and is the only one with results back from the assay lab.
"Our collaborative approach to combining geology with artificial intelligence has yet again proven itself in the field, allowing our clients to be cost effective and efficient with their exploration program," GoldSpot Discoveries CEO Denis Laviolette said of AI targeted gold discovery at Queensway. "We look forward to seeing future results from our work with NFGC, and to continuing our fruitful and successful partnership."
Queensway plays into the strength of GoldSpot's AI exploration approach, the ability to take large land packages and distill all available geological information to identify the most efficient and cost-effective way to explore prospective terrain.
The AI-powered drill targeting at Queensway began with compiling all the public geological, geophysical, geochemical and structural data available for the project and surrounding areas.
As part of the data gathering process, GoldSpot personnel and New Found geologists spent two months carrying out an intensive data collection program to further refine its geological understanding of the property and mineralization controls. This process included visiting over 600 outcrops and recording various rock types, collecting grab samples and documenting a wide range of geological features.
Additionally, 1,278 new structural measurements were collected by the field team and used to reinterpret the current understanding of the structural regime of the land package.
Goldspot says this two-month exercise identified a clear pattern of gold development at the intersection of the east-northeast trending faults interpreted from electromagnetic geophysical data and principle faults that trend north-northeast. This and other structural insights were compiled with the extensive geological and geophysical information as the basis for the AI targeting exercise.
And, based on the spectacular results from 100 meters down the first drill hole, this targeting exercise is a success.
"We would like to thank GoldSpot Discoveries and their professional team for the utmost attention to detail in managing the data compilation and interpretation," said New Found Gold CEO Greg Matheson. "The combination of traditional and machine learning targeting has led to us to a discovery hole and New Found Gold looks forward to the continued advancement of this project and partnership with GoldSpot."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Read more about GoldSpot Discoveries and the use of AI in mineral exploration at Mining exploration becomes smarter with AI published in the Jan. 22 edition of Metal Tech News.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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