The Charlotte Bongará claim block is located near the northern end of a belt of carbonate outcrops belonging to the Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic Pucará Group. The belt is up to 25 km wide and extends for 900 km down the eastern flank of the Andean Cordillera from Rio Santa Aguada (Ecuador border) in the north to the Peruvian city of Huancayo in the south. It contains a number of Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) lead–zinc deposits and occurrences along its length, including the operating San Vicente Mine (~20 Mt grading ~10% Zn) some 100 km to the north of Huancayo. This belt is located on the western margin of the Sub-Andean Foreland Basin, and contains Permian to Neogene aged sedimentary rocks which were deposited on the western margin of the Brazilian Shield

The claim block is crossed by a series of north-south and west-northwest trending structures and lineaments, the former of which are believed to reflect deep basement faults and controlled the margins of an early Mesozoic rift basin of the same trend. This rift basin is believed to have accumulated a thick sequence of Mitu Group clastic rocks and evaporates, the former of which may have provided a conduit for fluid migration. The west northwest-trending structures are believed to be related to a transverse basement shear zone and the intersection of the north trending rift basin and the west-northwest trending shear zone aided in the formation of an early-Mesozoic “pull-apart basin” (the Pomochaca Pull-Apart Basin, or PPAB), forming the structural framework for the MVT-style (zinc ± lead) mineralization, the principal style of mineralization on the Property (Anglo Peruana, 2005).

Geology/Mineralization

Most of the zinc/lead mineralization observed to date on the claim block occurs within the uppermost Pucará Group (Condorsinga Formation) carbonate host rocks and is related to a series of north and north-northwest trending mineralized “feeder” fractures and faults. Peripheral to the “feeders”, weak mineralization has passed laterally into porosity and permeability enhanced parts of the carbonate sequence. The Condorsinga Formation is generally not regarded as the most favourable host for mineralization because it is not as receptive to replacement by MVT mineralizing fluids as is the underlying Chambará Formation. Condorsinga-hosted mineralization on the Property is probably related to leakage of mineralizing fluids which migrated upwards through the Aramachay Formation from the potentially more receptive Chambará Formation carbonate sequence at depth. AMEC, an independent mining consulting company, is of the opinion that the best opportunity for large tonnage MVT-style mineralization is at depth in the largely unexposed Chambará Formation.