Africa Mineral Resource Specialists Inc.

Projects Available Through AMRS

AMRS is a part owner of Canyon Resources Africa Limited (CRAL), a company jointly owned by AMRS (10%) and Canyon Resources Corporation of Golden, Colorado (90%).  A few projects are still held by CRAL in Ethiopia.  

A brief description of our projects, along with some descriptive maps and figures are provided below.   To view the map, click on the thumbnail view.

Companies who might be interested in joint ventures on these projects should contact Bill Boberg (billboberg@africaminerals.com) at the AMRS office.

Ethiopian Rift Valley Epithermal Gold Project:

           

CRAL began work in the East African Rift Valley of Ethiopia in1995 by evaluating geothermal energy studies completed by the Ethiopian Institute of Geological Surveys (EIGS) over the past thirty years. These evaluations, coupled with field examinations, developed several potential target areas. By 1998 CRAL had demonstrated that the potential for epithermal gold deposits, including giant deposits, in the region was real. Over 800 surface rock chip samples were collected in thirteen prospect areas and widespread anomalous gold was found to be present in several of these.

CRAL was granted a one-year prospecting license covering an area of 1100 km² in 1997. Work on that license area was completed in April 1998 and an application for 575 km² of the original license area was submitted. Due to the severe reduction in project funding since mid 1998, that license is still pending and has not yet been issued. Two other license applications, totaling 2950 km², were submitted in 1998 and they are also pending. In addition, CRAL conducted a regional evaluation of the entire Afar Triangle, utilizing Landsat TM imagery to identify potential alteration anomalies based on CRAL’s experience with altered and gold mineralized areas in the region. This regional evaluation identified well over 100 potential alteration anomalies, some of which are huge and have the potential of containing giant deposits. CRAL is now offering a joint venture covering its pending license areas and the reconnaissance project covering the entire Afar Triangle to potential joint venture partners.

Landsat TM false color and color ratio image evaluations were completed on nine separate images covering a total area of nearly 200,000 km², essentially the entire Afar Triangle, in a search for alteration anomalies. In our preliminary evaluation we identified well over one hundred predicted alteration anomalies of which we have ground checked only thirteen. Of the thirteen areas which have been field checked, ten did exhibit some degree of alteration as predicted and six of those demonstrated anomalous gold values in the samples which were collected. Two of the areas exhibited strong enough alteration and anomalous gold so that they were studied in greater detail. In one prospect, 403 of the 431 samples sent for assay contained detectable gold and had 18 samples with greater than 0.5 ppm gold, 3 samples with greater than 1.0 ppm gold and the highest value was 3.5 ppm gold.

The East African Rift Valley is a prominent extensional feature that starts in the Red Sea of the coast of Eritrea and Djibouti and then cuts diagonally across Ethiopia from the northeast to the southwest as seen on Figures 1 and 2, a distance of more than 1000 kilometers in Ethiopia alone. It bisects the highlands of the region into the Eastern Highlands and the Western Highlands and the floor of the Rift Valley is commonly at an elevation of about 1000 meters less than the adjacent highlands. The great East African Rift extends from the Red Sea all the way to Mozambique in southern Africa, a distance of more than 4000 kilometers. More than one quarter of the great East African Rift lies within Ethiopia.

The highlands are commonly underlain by Tertiary (Eocene to Miocene) plateau type flood basalts and rhyolites capped, in places, by younger Tertiary volcanics while the floor of the Rift Valley is commonly Quaternary to Recent basin fill sediments and alluvium and mid-Tertiary to very young volcanic features, such as cinder cones, volcanoes and hot springs. In some areas the Rift escarpment is very pronounced while others are more gradual, the result of a series of step faults, down in to the graben.

At the north end of the Ethiopian Rift, an area referred to as the Afar Triangle (or also known as the Afar Depression or the Danikil Depression), the Rift Valley becomes extremely broad, up to 250 kilometers wide, due to the fact that it is the focus of a continental plate triple junction (the Afar Triple Junction). The three major tectonic lineaments that dominate the structure of the Northern Rift Valley are the Red Sea trend (a NW - SE trend), the Gulf of Aden trend (roughly an East - West trend) and the Ethiopian Rift trend (a NE - SW trend).

Volcanism appears to be younger to the northeast, although young volcanism is also common throughout the entire Ethiopian Rift Valley and the Afar Triangle. The oldest rocks within the Afar Triangle are basement rocks of Proterozoic greenstones and Mesozoic sediments while the common rocks are extensive outcrops of Miocene-Pliocene basalts, trachytes and rhyolites

The common Afar Series Volcanics (Miocene-Pliocene) consists of mildly alkaline basalts with subordinate alkaline and peralkaline silicics (rhyolite domes and flows and ingnimbrites) while the slightly younger Danikil Group consists of conglomerate, sandstone and siltstone with intercalated submarine basalt flows and lacustrine sediments. Volcanic rocks from Eocene to Quaternary are present throughout the Afar Triangle and Quaternary valley fill sediments are common.

The Afar Triangle is the focus of many internal graben features, controlled by one or another of the major structural trends, as well as large volcanic features. The internal grabens are filled with Quaternary to Recent basin fill sediments, rhyolite domes, fissure basalt flows, numerous cinder cones and basaltic to peralkaline rhyolitic volcanoes and granites showing deep seated magmatic origin. The Afar region is very arid with sparse vegetation cover.