Terrain Minerals has discovered clay-type rare earth elements at its fully owned Lort River project in Western Australia after a review of historic auger drilling data, including a high percentage of rare earths used in the production of magnets.
Assays also show high scandium grades the company says are a potentially important addition to the high-grade rare earth mineralisation.
Terrain plans to advance exploration at Lort River to target the underlying clay horizon beneath the shallow soil anomaly at the site.
Drilling will target shallow high-grade clay rare earth mineralisation and testing for other minerals.
Results include 580 parts-per-million total rare earth oxide, with 25 per cent of the total grade magnet rare earth oxides.
Other samples returned 525 and 513ppm with a total magnet rare earth oxide percentage of 27 and 28 per cent respectively.
The company says the results appear to follow reserves linked to early gold exploration.
The Lort River project area covers three exploration tenements covering 320 square kilometres of the prospective “rare earths province” near Esperance.
The soil results cover Terrain’s two western tenements. The company’s eastern tenement has never been explored for rare earth mineralisation and is believed to be prospective for further rare earth anomalies.
The biggest tenement is surrounded on three sides by Meeka Gold Limited that recently released results showing large areas of regolith hosted rare earths, including a strong and extensive anomaly adjoining Terrain’s ground to the south.
The tenure covers significant sections of major regional shear zones, including Kateup Creek and Helms, Bishops Hat and Lauriana.
In addition to rare earths, Terrain says the zones present significant untested and highly prospective targets for gold and base metals.
In addition to Lort River, Terrain holds emerging gold exploration projects at Wild Viper near Leonora and Smokebush near Paynes Find in WA.
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By Matt Birney
