AMN - BOTSWANA: Pangolin Diamonds starts core drilling

Pangolin Diamonds Corp has started core drilling on a 10-hectare kimberlite pipe-shaped target (MAL 278) at its wholly-owned Malatswae Diamond Project in Botswana. This project is 75km southeast of the Orapa Kimberlite Field.

It is following up on a percussion drill program, which was initially identified from regional aeromagnetic data. This was subsequently followed by a detailed ground magnetic survey and a soil sampling program.

The ground magnetic survey resulted in a positive magnetic anomaly of about 10 hectares which had disrupted the continuation of Karoo age dolerite dykes.

Data from ground magnetics was submitted to Xcalibur Airborne Geophysics (Pty) Limited, Pretoria, South Africa, for interpretation. It concluded that both 2.5 D simple body profile modelling and 3D magnetic inversion modelling results show quite convincing kimberlite-like shapes for the main MAL 278 target.

The MAL 278 target’s magnetic manifestation indicates a complex body made up of different facies and possible different lobes of magma pulses, particularly in the more detailed 3D UBC magnetic inversion performed as part of the Xcalibur interpretation.

The depth of the magnetic bodies was modelled to be between 97 and 222 metres with a precaution that non-kimberlitic crater fill could be thick in the centre.

Soil sampling produced kimberlite indicators over the southern part of the MAL 278 target and a single diamond 450 metres to the east of the main target.

Four percussion holes were drilled into the MAL 278 target and one percussion hole was drilled as a geological control hole 125 metres to the east of the target. The geological control hole intersected, as expected, 19 metres of Kalahari Formation sediments, 17 metres of Karoo basalt and then intersected the underlying Karoo-aged Ntane sandstone.

No Karoo basalt was intersected in the boreholes drilled into the MAL 278 target. All four holes intersected sediments within what is interpreted as a crater environment. No intrusive material was intersected.

Kimberlitic indicators, both garnet and ilmenite, were recovered from borehole BH02 between the depths of 74 and 98 metres. All indicator minerals were submitted for microprobe to CFM Laboratories, Kelowna, Canada, for analysis and confirmed as kimberlitic.

A core drilling program of at least 200 metres has been initiated to confirm the magnetic source.

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