VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Jan. 19, 2012) - Rockland Minerals Corp. (TSX VENTURE:RL) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has increased its participating interest from 55% to 64% in the Schefferville Gold Property through its exploration activities on the property since completing earn-in on June 12, 2011. Rockland and Western Troy Capital Resources Inc., formed a joint venture on the property in June 2011 and Rockland subsequently carried out two field exploration programs on the Rusty Acres zone in July and September 2011.
The joint venture agreement covers 199 claims staked over known gold showings originally discovered in the mid-1980's by Québec government geologists. They cover the highly prospective Arséne-Baleine Rouge and Rusty Acres areas. Rockland now holds a 64% interest and Western Troy holds a 36% interest in the property.
The Schefferville Gold property mineralization is believed to be hosted within and adjacent to thin, Algoma-type banded iron formations lying in a metasedimentary graywacke sequence which is now complexly folded and metamorphosed to the upper amphibolite to granulite facies. Rockland believes that these Archean-age iron-rich units trapped gold mineralization mobilized during devolitalization of sedimentary rocks, deep within the roots of an orogenic zone, and that the Ashuanipi arsenic-gold occurrences were formed near the brittle-ductile crustal transition, in the root zones of an Abitibi-type system as postulated by E.M. Cameron of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1989.
Gold mineralization was discovered relatively recently, in the mid-1980's, during Québec government regional lake-bottom geochemical surveys, and the area has only seen one cycle of exploration drilling. Based on Rockland drilling and field work to date, the company believes that the potential for several shallow open pit disseminated gold deposits exist.
Exploration highlights
During fall 2010, Rockland completed a 1,525 meter diamond drilling program on the Schefferville Gold Property. Highlights from the drill program included 8.25 metres of 1.24 grams-per-tonne gold (including 1.20 m of 6.63 g/t Au) and 12.55 metres of 1.04 grams-per-tonne gold (including 1.10 m of 9.02 g/t au). These results, along with Western Troy's 2009 drilling, (in particular, hole WT09-04, which encountered 5.56 grams-per-tonne gold over a core length of 7.11 metres in the Baleine Rouge Central zone), confirm the presence of broad zones of near-surface disseminated gold mineralization.
During fall 2011, two sampling programs discovered widespread gold values, in the 4-12 grams-per-tonne gold range, in surface grab samples from iron-stained outcrops at the Rusty Acres zone. A lone grab sample from one of the mineralized areas at Rusty Acres returned a gold assay of 171 g/t Au, a value higher than anything previously reported in the literature and confirms the attractiveness of this target area. Pathfinder multi-element geochemical data from this high-grade sample shows iron, sulfur and arsenic contents typical of the gold-bearing Precambrian iron formations sampled so far in the district, plus highly anomalous pathfinders antimony and bismuth.
George F. Sanders, P.Geo, a director of the Company and the Qualified Person under NI 43-101 responsible for the technical content of this news release.
We seek Safe Harbor.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Rav Mlait, President and CEO
Rockland Minerals Corp.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contact Information:
Rav Mlait
President and CEO
604-551-7831
604-676-2767 (FAX)
info@rocklandminerals.ca
www.rocklandminerals.ca