Melissa Render, VP of Exploration, New Found Gold Corp.
An exploration geologist with 10 + years’ experience focused on orogenic gold. Managed exploration projects worldwide from grassroots to advanced stages in greenstone belts including the Abitibi, Eastern Goldfields, Hope Bay, Central Lapland and Banfora for Kinross Gold, AngloGold Ashanti and TMAC Resources. 3 years as a consultant specializing in target generation, 3D modelling, data management and exploration program design.
Talk Abstract:
New Found Gold Corporation is a Canadian junior company exploring numerous high-grade orogenic lode gold prospects in the central Newfoundland gold belt. The Queensway project is a district-scale exploration play striking over 100 km and covers an area of 151,025 ha. In addition to the discoveries made to date, including the Keats, Golden Joint, and Lotto zones, the district boasts numerous gold showings and tens of kilometres of untested strike length.
The project lies within the Exploits Subzone of the Dunnage Zone which is comprised of a fold-thrust sequence of Ordovician turbiditic rocks of the Davidsville Group. The property is transected by two prominent regional-scale structures, the Appleton fault zone and the JBP fault zone that formed during orogenesis related to the closing of the Iapetus and Rheic oceans. Gold mineralization occurs in a variety of quartz vein styles that occupy secondary faults that form a network adjacent to the regional structures.
The Keats Zone was discovered during the 2019 inaugural diamond drill program by the first hole which intersected the SW-plunging domain of bonanza grade gold. This unique feature of the Keats Zone is controlled by high-dilation breccia segments that occur along the second-order Keats-Baseline fault zone. Gold mineralization at the Keats Zone is hosted in quartz-dominant breccias and vein arrays related to the Keats-Baseline fault which transects the NNE-trending subvertical stratigraphy. Within this fault zone, quartz vein textures including brecciated, vuggy and stylolitic record a complex history of vein formation and incremental growth. The system shows a Au-As-Sb-W metal association where high-grade quartz-bearing lodes contain coarse grained gold particles, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, boulangerite, Fe-carbonate and NH4 muscovite.
With continued drilling and the collection of critical datasets including oriented down-hole images, spectral, geophysical and geochemical, the Keats Zone’s litho-structural framework has started to take form. Understanding the relationship between the high-grade gold mineralization, host stratigraphy and structure will be important for strategizing ongoing exploration efforts.
Live Online Broadcast:
Please register/log-in for this online broadcast using the link above. TGDG members will also be able to view this presentation at a later date by visiting our member's only Talk Recordings page.
