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Majestic has secured a Joint Venture agreement to control 51% interest in a group of highly prospective gold mineral claims ("SJN Claims") located in the southeastern portion of the renowned Tapajó Gold District. Collectively, the claims total nearly 100,000 hectares, providing the Company with controlling interest in one of the largest mineral claim land packages in the Tapajós region.
Geology and Mineralization
Geologically, the Tapajós area is situated within the highly gold-productive, Proterozoic-Archaean aged Brazilian Shield that runs from Brazil through Guyana and into Venezuela. The Tapajós Gold District has generally been regarded as one of the more extensive modern gold-rush areas in the world today covering a 350km by 200km area in the southwest part of Brazil's northerly Pará State. It has been reported that Tapajós has produced between 30 million and 50 million ounces of gold.
History
The Tapajós District has a rich history of alluvial gold production with the first gold production reported in 1958. A significant number of alluvial districts have produced more than 3Moz of gold during their mining history. Alluvial gold deposits are scattered everywhere over a large area in the province. In spite of being a world-class gold producing region, concerted mineral exploration efforts started only at the beginning of the 1990's and not a single medium-to-large sized primary gold deposit was known to occur before this time frame. In recent years, several primary economic deposits have been discovered, including the Saõ Jorge Gold Deposit and the Palito Gold Deposit (both of which were discovered by Majestic's co-founder, Pedro Jacobi, prior to forming Majestic). The discovery of these primary gold deposits attracted several major exploration/mining companies to Tapajós, including: Rio Tinto, Barrick Gold, Placer Dome, Phelps Dodge, and Kinross Gold.
The Tapajós' widespread alluvial gold deposits are believed to be a strong indicator of the area's exploration potential for the discovery of additional primary hard-rock gold deposits that lie along structural controls of the major intrusive-fed shear zones running through the area. Some earlier exploration work in the area has already showed the productive potentials of this shear zone. In 1999, Rio Tinto carried out 4,000 meters of diamond drilling at the Saõ Jorge deposit. Rio is reported to have outlined a resource of about 12.7-million tonnes (grading from 1.3 g/t in the oxide layer to 2.4 g/t to a depth of 200 meters) in primary intrusive shear zone gold mineralization.
Majestic's Joint Venture interest in the 100,000 hectare claim block is strategically located in between the Saõ Jorge Gold Deposit (1.7M oz), and the Palito Gold Deposit (1.5M oz) in one of Tapajós' most prolific gold-producing areas. Early exploration work on the SJN Claims has identified several promising gold occurrences with gold grades ranging from 1g/t to 10g/t.
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