A scientific firm better known for leveraging probability statistics to help find sunken vessels and missing flight recorders is set to advise a veteran gold exploration team about where lost gold mines from the Spanish colonial era may lie in Ecuador's Cutucu mountains on the western edge of the Amazonian basin.
Aurania Resources Ltd., the gold explorer, has billed Metron Inc.'s help as a first in the resource sector.
"They are very successful in using a blend of anecdotal information along with factual scientific data," Aurania President Richard Spencer said in an interview with S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Metron, which Aurania hired in early July, will present initial data about potential targets on the Lost Cities-Cutucu project in a couple of weeks, he said.
The firm relies on statistics and data analysis to pinpoint the most likely location of something lost. Typically Metron uses the method to help find things such as black boxes from missing aircraft and sunken vessels, including submarines.
Keith Barron, Aurania's CEO and Chairman, and Ecuadorian historian Octavio Latorre have theorized that two gold mining centers from the Spanish colonial era in South America may lie on concessions it holds in Ecuador's east. The research is based on references to the mines, called Logroño de los Caballeros and Sevilla del Oro, in historic records and maps.
Metron's initial task will be to help Aurania rule out the least likely areas, pairing Metron's targeting with Aurania's assessment of the project, Spencer said. It will produce a map with probability weightings on targets using basic geology, historic documentation and exploration experience. Aurania hopes it serves as a kind of second opinion on which targets to chase.
"Our team brings a lot of experience to our exploration," Spencer said. "But the flip side of experiences is bias. Sometimes that's good and sometimes it's not so good."
Both Aurania's Spencer and Barron are veteran explorers in South America. Barron was a key part of the team that discovered the Fruta del Norte gold deposit in Ecuador, which Lundin Gold Inc. is now putting into production, while Spencer helped find the Loma Larga gold deposit, also in Ecuador, according to Aurania's website.
Aurania will start drilling gold targets on the Lost Cities property in the next few weeks, Spencer said, and also plans to drill a recently discovered area that yielded notable copper-silver anomalies. The company recently raised C$2.78 million in a private placement.
Spencer also said that as new data rolls in, Metron's probability maps will be refined.
"It's going to be interesting," Spencer said of Metron's upcoming analysis. "I wouldn't be surprised if they start working quite a lot more with resource companies."
