History & Geology
The Wild Rush to Find More Cobalt—Part I
February 2018 by Chris Ralph
While some future cobalt will come from recycling lithium batteries and other products, the coming huge need for cobalt is virtually a perfect storm of heavy demand and insufficient supply.
The Strange History of the Utica Mine
In the summer of 1854, John Selkirk, a discouraged placer miner who was down on his luck and ready to go back to Massachusetts, tied his mule up in a gulch north of what is now downtown Angel's Camp.
California: The Land of Big Nuggets—Part II
There are a number of Tertiary river channels in the area, most of which trend south-southwest. They tend to be steep, narrow, and rich with coarse gold.
Mineralized Faults and Contacts in the Search for Gold
Fault zones and rock contacts are important because the vast majority of gold and silver deposits, as well as those of many other metals, are formed by hot, mineralized water solutions.Gold in Tertiary Gravels
In some places, semi-continuous sections of riverbed can easily be linked in many places to identify the path of the ancient rivers.
Surface Indications Of Quartz Adularia Epithermal Deposits
I am going to keep to the basics of surface indications and visual clues in the rocks and minerals themselves that help me find gold-bearing veins in this classification of deposits.
Gold of the Iditarod Mining District, Alaska
It was the middle of winter and the valley was covered in snow, making prospecting a matter of sinking shafts in the ground.
Critical Minerals: Tungsten
Because tungsten minerals are heavy, exploration can be done using stream sediment samples. Prospectors looking for gold have found scheelite or wolframite in their placer concentrates, and in some cases this has led them to make important tungsten finds.
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