Venus Metals believes the presence of mafic-ultramafic rocks discovered during recent exploration at its Youanmi base metals and lithium projects make the area prospective for gold and base metals mineralisation.
The rocks were found along an east-south-east trending structure that comes off the Youanmi shear zone close to Ramelius Resources’ Penny gold mine, about 550km north-east of Perth.
Recent regional aeromagnetic data compiled by CORE Geophysics identified several structural targets about 4km east of the Penny mine.
Air core drilling of 46 holes covering 1200m tested geochemical anomalies and structural targets that confirmed the presence of sheared mafic-ultramafic bedrock.
The company is planning air core and RC drilling to search for gold mineralisation similar to the Penny deposit.
Anomalous rare earth elements were detected in several holes including a maximum discovery of 3770 parts-per-million lanthanum-cerium-yttrium.
Venus says a further assaying for a full suite of rare earths is underway.