Open File 012A/1811

Structurally Controlled Gold System, Antler Gold Inc.’s Wilding Lake Property, Central Newfoundland

I.W. Honsberger, W. Bleeker, H.A.I. Sandeman, D.T.W. Evans and S.L. Kamo

St. John’s, Newfoundland, October, 2019

Abstract

Crustal-scale fault zones in central Newfoundland are emerging as significant gold-mineralized structures. In particular, the northeast-trending Rogerson Lake Conglomerate structural corridor, in the eastern Dunnage Zone (Exploits Subzone), contains highly prospective orogenic-style vein-hosted gold deposits. Such mineralized vein systems, exposed near Valentine Lake (Marathon Gold Corp.) and Wilding Lake (Antler Gold Inc.), are products of progressive Paleozoic deformation and fluid-pressure cycling along crustal-scale faults that cut the Silurian Rogerson Lake Conglomerate and underlying Neoproterozoic basement rocks of Ganderia. Well exposed, gold-bearing quartz vein systems of the Alder Zone and Elm Zone on Antler Gold Inc.’s Wilding Lake property, reveal a kinematic history that involved a main phase of reverse sinistral shearing and subsequent transient phases of horizontal extension, oblique compression, and, at least, local components of late dextral strike-slip. High-grade gold mineralization is associated with siderite‒ankerite‒sericite alteration of the host rocks, quartz vein formation, and supergene alteration of chalcopyrite. Gold-bearing veins sets are composed of quartz, pyrite, chalcopyrite, tourmaline, bismuth-tellurides, and secondary goethite and malachite. A prospective mineralized belt of Silurian feldspar porphyry and felsic volcanic rocks adjacent to the Rogerson Lake Conglomerate structural corridor is exposed in the Red Ochre Complex and Third Spot showing, respectively, on the Wilding Lake property. A prospective future gold exploration target in the Wilding Lake area is a rheologically favourable Neoproterozoic granodiorite‒gabbro‒tonalite body that nonconformably underlies the Rogerson Lake Conglomerate and may provide a setting similar to that at Valentine Lake.

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