Paramount Gold and Silver Corp.: Drilling Expands New Gold/Silver Target at San Miguel
South San Francisco Bulk Mineable Discovery Adding Resource Potential
CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO–(Marketwire – June 17, 2010) – Paramount Gold and Silver Corp. (TSX:PZG)(NYSE Amex:PZG)(FRANKFURT:P6G) -
Resource definition drilling continues to progress successfully on bulk-mineable gold targets discovered by Paramount in December and January in the South San Francisco area of the San Miguel Project. Exploration work is also finding additional similar targets on the large San Miguel land package.
Christopher Crupi, CEO of Paramount stated, “drilling confirms that the San Francisco area is an important discovery with bulk-mineable resource potential we can define this year. We are also finding a number of new target opportunities where we can apply the knowledge gained at San Francisco to make new discoveries.” Paramount owns a 100% interest in the 188,461 hectare (approximately 466,000 acre) San Miguel Project in the Palmarejo District of northwest Mexico, making it the largest claim holder in this rapidly emerging precious metals mining camp.
Mineralization at South San Francisco is shaped by a favorable combination of permissive volcanic and intrusive rock units along with structural intersections which together provide several controls for concentrating gold. Intermediate to acidic composition volcanic rocks and intermediate composition intrusions are host to the gold occurrences discovered at South San Francisco. These rocks are in contact with acidic composition shallow intrusive or extrusive dome rocks that have little gold in them but have served to create an intensive fracture system in the surrounding rocks. Structural intersections between northwest trending and east-west trending faults have also created an extensive fracture system that localized gold. Superimposing these different phases of rock preparation has created a mineralized zone extending about 400 meters in an east-west direction and more than 750 meters in a northwest direction.
Ongoing research at South San Francisco has identified several distinguishing characteristics that differentiate its style of gold occurrence from deposits elsewhere in the Palmarejo District. Hydrothermal alteration in the South San Francisco area has produced a more subtle surface expression and unique clay mineralogy distinguishing it from the vein-associated deposits like Palmarejo and San Miguel. In general, the precious metals are disbursed in the volcanic rocks in association with narrow fractures and quartz stockwork veins, rather than within well-defined quartz veins. The vertical zonation of quartz vein systems typical of the Palmarejo District are not in evidence at South San Francisco where gold concentrations are recognized at very shallow depths with less silver. South San Francisco type targets seem to be high level gold-rich systems geologically separate from the vertically zoned silver-gold systems previously identified in the Palmarejo District.
Recent results from the South San Francisco target area include: see the results at www.paramountgold.com
