I asked a geologist friend of mine to look at the data recently posted on the Nemo. website.
These are his preliminary comments:
"There's really not much there that wasn't in the original Geologists estimates. Basically, what it appears was done, is that sampling was done horizontally across the Adit 2 times. Once by the Gulf Geologist, and once by Hawk. I can see why Gulf originally chose to dig the adit, it was to get a more 3 dimensional view of what was actually in the ground. Drilling vertically to get depth, drilling horizontally to get breadth. You can see by looking at the results in the attached excel file that the further into Zone D the samples were taken, the larger the percentage of Niobium was encountered. One might hypothesize that the presence of more malignite material would be encountered the further into the Zone. On the other side of that coin, one might hypothesize that the end of the adit was the center of malignite concentration and that decreasing concentrations may be encountered with further horizontal sampling.
I don't think we can draw any further conclusion from the data that is available, other than to confirm the Gulf Geologists analysis of the substrate. Keep in mind that today's metal testing techniques are far more advanced than those that were used in the 50's. Sensitivity, for example, is likely far superior to the instruments they used in those days (even if the technique for testing was the same).
From a Geological perspective, with respect to igneous rock (and rock in general), 50 years is no time at all. So whatever was there in the 50's is going to be unchanged.
It would be nice to see a geologic map of the area, showing the main intrusions in the vicinity. This would give everyone a better understanding of just how large the contact zone of the intrusive rock might be and allow for more estimations on the amount of Niobium within the land. Intrusions are felsic and lighter than the above strata (picture a cork going up through water...that's how the intrusions work...and is also the explanation for gabbro material, since it is of magmatic origin). Understanding just how large that "cork" is will give us a better understanding of the contact zone. Parsons says that the greatest concentrations of Niobium were found along that contact. We can do the math from there.
Let me know if you have any more questions. What will be telling is the vertical extent of Niobium, which should come back to us in any kind of vertical core log data that's been collected.
In summary, we need to know how large the intrusion is (by looking at a geologic map of the area) and the width of the niobium zones around the cork."
w/r Pmker
PS: Does anyone have access or can find the geologic map he's referencing here? I'd like to get that to her.
AI
