New Data Increases Exploration Potential of Aurania’S Mineral Systems IN Ecuador
TSX-V: ARU
NR 2022-20
NEW DATA INCREASES EXPLORATION POTENTIAL OF AURANIA’S MINERAL
SYSTEMS IN ECUADOR
Toronto, Ontario, October 17, 2022 – Aurania Resources Ltd. (TSXV: ARU) (OTCQB: AUIAF)
(Frankfurt: 20Q) (“Aurania” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that positive findings of careful
relogging of drill core together with the integration of geophysics and geochemistry from its Tiria-Shimpia
target in Aurania’s Lost Cities -Cutucu project in southeastern Ecuador (the “Project”), has revealed the
presence of a chain of three structural grabens occupying the middle of the concession block. Grabens are
extremely important in mineral exploration because their bounding faults are often through-going conduits
for hydrothermal fluids, and they have very high potential to be mineralized. This underlying work is
integral to advancing ongoing joint venture discussions while the Company begins preparations for a drill
program at its Tatasham and Awacha porphyry targets expected to commence later in 2022. Both programs
remain in line with Aurania’s corporate strategy discussed in February 2022.
Professor Gregor Borg, a recognized international expert on sediment -hosted copper deposits commented
on the review/reinterpretation of Aurania’s geological data , “ The reassembly and reinterpretation of
available data makes a totally new and very exciting story!”
The north graben is 10 kilometres long and 3.5 kilometres wide, the central graben is 26 kilo metres long
and 3 kilometres wide; and the south graben is 18 kilometres long and 5 kilometres wide.
Structural grabens, also known as pull -aparts or drop -downs, are areas where younger rocks have been
faulted downwards vertically, between older rocks by opposing horizontal forces. It can be thought of as
if the rocks have been stretched horizontally in opposite directions to breaking point, and then have subsided
downward along vertical bounding cracks (faults). Grabens can be recognized in the field when the rocks
abruptly appear out of age sequence. Lundin Gold’s Fruta del Norte gold deposit, approximately 100
kilometres south of the Project, lies in a structural graben as does Aurania board member Thomas Ullrich’s
recent high-grade copper discovery at the Storm deposit of Aston Bay in northern Canada. A number of
mineralizing patterns have now come into focus, which will be explained below, and Management
considers that the prospectivity of its sediment-hosted targets within the Project has been very considerably
enhanced. The process of review by Aurania’s technical team and consultants is ongoing.
Dr. Cristian Vallejo, Aurania’s Consultant Geological Expert on the Cutucu area, has relogged the Tiria -
Shimpia and Tsenken drillcore, placing it in the correct geological context. It was found that a contracted
paleontologist had incorrectly dated several index fossils and that Tiria -Shimpia sits in rocks that are 90
million years younger than previously believed. Dr . Vallejo convincingly correlated the drilling with oil
well DRA-29 outside the Project, and also dissolved representative pieces of Tiria-Shimpia core in acid for
palynology (dating of fossil pollen). The results definitively place the four Tiria-Shimpia holes in the Hollin
and Napo Formations , which are understood to the primary reservoir rocks for oil in Ecuador. In fact,
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impregnations of petroleum were found at depths of 345.8 m etres (“m”) to 357 m in Hole #2 in Shimpia.
While Management of Aurania does not consider there to be any potential for economic petroleum in the
concessions, the importance of this finding in the context of sediment-hosted base metal deposits cannot be
overemphasized. Crude petroleum, bitumen and natural gas have all been implicated as precipitation agents
in the formation of sediment -hosted copper deposits, and lead-zinc- silver deposits. The two styles of
mineralization are sometimes found in proximity but are separated horizontally or vertically due to
precipitation kinetics.
Over the last several years, Aurania has located numerous high- grade copper/silver showings across the
Project (see press releases dated August 6, 2020, July 30, 2020, April 9, 2019, April 2, 2019, and October
4, 2018), but t he proper understanding of the ore -deposits framework still eluded us to some extent . We
now know that the lower part of much of the concession area is occupied by Jurassic-aged Chapiza redbed
sediments that contain salt and that are over a kilometre in thickness. To date, salt has been intersected in
three drill holes in Tsenken and anhydrite evaporites were found in two other holes. The copper/silver
mineralization sits within laterally impersistent and thin beds of carbonaceous trash in the upper Chapiza,
stratigraphically above the salt beds, where plant debris and other organics have acted as chemical
reductants, precipitating copper and silver from circulating saline brine. The scenario is not unli ke the
Kupferschiefer of eastern Germany and Poland, but by themselves our thin beds are volumetrically too
minor to represent orebodies and are not exploration targets.
One exploration target however does leap out as exceptional and will be discussed presently. The Chapiza
redbeds would equate with the Rotliegendes (in German, the “underlying red”) directly beneath the
Kupferschiefer, an organic-rich “copper shale” which hosts the economic orebodies in Poland. We believed
formerly that our carbonaceous beds were a direct analogue to the Kupferschiefer unit, and indeed in some
ways they are, but a much better exploration target is proffered by the Hollin Formation higher in
stratigraphy, which is both thick and bituminous with good porosity. These rocks were formerly not thought
to be in the central graben, but the recent study made by Cristian Vallejo has identified the Upper Hollin
formation (“Fm”) in hole #1 and #2 below the Napo Fm. Hollin also subcrops within the southern graben,
in an area where there is a large MobileMT (“MMT”) conductive anomaly that was heretofore considered
to be spurious.
The geological model for sediment -hosted copper deposits is predicated on a source accumulation of
oxidized sediments in a basin that has occasionally evapora ted to dryness, leaving behind salt beds. The
theory is that minute amounts of copper in oxidized minerals become labile and can be stripped and then
mobilized in brine as copper chloride. Heated brine would typically travel upwards through the rock
column along faults and where it encountered organics, pyrite, or some other precipitation agent would
drop the copper out of solution to form copper sulphides such as chalcocite. Professor Borg has previously
commented that the presence of coeval porphyry co pper deposits in the Chapiza means that the basin is
“Turbocharged” with a “Double whammy”, or twice as much fertile copper potential as a normal scenario.
Watch the video with Prof. Borg here: http://www.aurania.com/the-opportunity-a-copper-experts-opinion.
The same model components are present in the Kupferschiefer and Aston Bay’s new Storm deposit but
without copper porphyry.
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Figure 1: From Vallejo et al. 2021. The central panel pertains to the Cutucu and provides stratigraphic
context to this press release. The host rocks to Zn-Pb-Ag at Tiria-Shimpia are in the middle Napo Shale of
the central panel. Previously they were believed to be in the Santiago Fm, at the very bottom of the
stratigraphic column in the lower Jurassic. The copper source rocks and salt are in the Late Jurassic Chapiza
Fm.
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Figure 2: Interpreted geology. The sense of throw on the faults is still to be entirely defined. Most of the
field of view is occupied by the NNW Central Graben containing Napo and Hollin Fm. The Southern
Graben contains Napo, Hollin and Chapiza in a synclinal structure.
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Figure 3: The magnetic airborne survey reduced to pole, first vertical derivative. The Central Graben is in
the centre of view and silver occurrences are along the boundary faults as well as internal longitudinal
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faults. A second cluster of silver values is in the Southern Graben block and are related to a different style
of mineralization (Cu-Ag).
Figure 4: The distribution of copper and zinc in soils, within surveyed and sampled areas. Note that the
distribution of Zn in the Central Graben mimics the distribution of Ag in outcrop from Figure 3. Cu has a
wider distribution and is concentrated in Tsenken in the Southern Graben where it occurs close to copper-
in-sediment occurrences but is also anomalous in other areas. These other areas are flows and subvolcanic
intrusives of basalt to andesite within the Chapiza Fm. Drilling has shown them to be partially to completely
oxidized, and coeval with the redbed sediments. They have high intrinsic backgrounds in Cu and Co and
are considered an excellent protolith for mobilization into stratigraphically higher sediments.
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Figure 5: Soil results for uranium.
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Figure 6: Soil results for chromium.
Figures 5 and 6 are blow ups of the South Graben area. Figure 5 has the distribution of uranium in soils
superimposed and 6, chromium in soils superimposed. The folded calc-alkaline basalt and andesite flow is
outlined by Cr contents in Figure 6 (due to mafic character) and is clearly seen in Figure 5, which is free of
anomalous U values over the flow. The saddle-shaped folding of the flow is clearly duplicated up-section
by anomalous uranium, highly suggesting there is a stratiform accumulation of uranium in sediments. The
picture for copper in Figure 4 is less clear but potentially covariant with uranium. Copper and uranium are
often found together in sediment-hosted deposits e.g., Zambia Copperbelt. There is no MMT conductor in