What are Rocks and Gold’s Habitat or Association?

Hey, it’s Prospector Jess again! I wanted to let you in on a little secret, and that is that rocks that go with gold are known to have a what’s called a habitat. It’s somewhat like what you’d think about when it comes to animals, and that is that there are certain rocks that will hang together and that’s true of gold as well as a mineral. So these rocks and minerals want to hang in the same habitat together, and if you know what that is, you can begin to understand, if you’re looking for gold, what you are looking at are rocks and minerals that will likely go with it. You’ve heard me mention several times that there are certain rocks and gold that go together. You can see some of this (Magnesium-Ferric) mafic material on this screen.

And then,let’s see if I got this right. On this opening screen, you see a big chunk of pyrite. Both of those minerals have very different habitats, but one of the things you want to be aware of is how they fit together. If it’s Chalcopyrite, which this is not, this is iron pyrite, but if it’s Chalcopyrite and it has kind of a rainbow color to it or a coppery color to it in addition, and some of these crystals, instead of being these nice crystals that are formed here tend to be warped and distorted. That can indicate that there’s gold with it and that is a habitat that goes together. There’s something else about that habitat that’s important to you, and that is that when it’s a Chalcopyrite, or quartz, it’s a high temperature habitat. In other words, the injection that went on was a high temperature intrusion. If it’s something a little lower temperature, like this Iron pyrite would be along with perhaps say some ultra-mafic material or even some basaltic material that might be cross cut.

Not too often with basalt, and that’s one of the points, the habitat. Those don’t typically go together. So if you see serpentine on the other hand, now we’re talking about some minerals that go together with gold, so there’s a series of these in it. It’s too long to go into here, but those things connect the dots and basically will help you see gold, before the gold shows up in your pan.

That’s a really big goal!

Get to know the habitat of the minerals, and the classes of minerals and rocks that go together and you’ll be able to see gold before the gold shows up in your pan. Very important tip for tonight. I also wanted to point out, we still have this GGM offer going on, and it’s something worthy of taking advantage of. If you want to be able to map like we did last night, and map custom maps of your own sites, and zero in on where and what rocks and minerals are found.

Again, if you know what rocks and minerals are found in the area, oftentimes some of these things are mining values that go with that. These minerals go together and if you know what kinds of minerals are coming out of the mines on your map, because you clicked on the thing and it’s showing the GGM thing. If you click on it and it expands and shows you the details of what’s in that mine, you now know some of the minerals and rocks that went with it. If you know the habitats, and that’s another piece of information, you can connect those dots together, and say there’s likely going to be this kind of ultramafic intrusions, or likely to be quartz or granite that has this kind of gold or this kind of silver and gold. They’re tied together in this mineral species, this mineral collection, and so you’re looking for that information so that you can connect the dots and build your own map.

Again, not just the map of location, but the map of what geology and rocks and minerals are in the area so you can connect those dots together and make it all happen. Find more gold.

So this is Prospector Jess for this evening, a quick one, and then over and out.

Catch you later. Have Good Prospecting!