Van Sun hypes Fronteer's Olympic Dam-in-Yukon quest
2007-07-23 09:07 ET - In the News
The Vancouver Sun reports in its Saturday edition western North America may have once been joined to Australia, a hypothesis that Fronteer Development is banking on to help it find riches in the Yukon. The Sun's Fiona Anderson writes the theory is that if Australia and the Yukon were once joined, the two areas would share geology. Australia boasts the Olympic Dam mine, a multimineral orebody that includes the world's largest uranium deposit and fourth-largest copper deposit. Fronteer is spending $6-million in the Yukon this year looking for the Canadian equivalent. The theory has academic backing. Derek Thorkelson, chair of Earth sciences at Simon Fraser University, is researching whether the continents were joined and is finding "a very strong connection." Mineralization in Yukon's Wernecke district is "virtually identical to the mineralization at the Olympic Dam mine in southeast Australia," Mr. Thorkelson said. The most important thing is the age of the rocks, and the Wernecke Mountains and the Olympic Dam mineral deposit are both about 1.6 billion years old, he said. The link to Australia "does add a lot of potential to exploration efforts which are going into similar rocks in the Yukon," he said.
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