Cobalt First Cobalt has partnered with Laurentian University’s Mineral Exploration Research Centre to undertake a detailed study of its properties in the Cobalt camp.
The partnership allows for the sponsoring of a post-doctoral position at the university.
“We’re looking at it with a new set of eyes as researchers,” said Ross Sherlock, who oversees MERC’s Metal Earth project. “It’s an unusual geological assemblage.”
The researcher will work alongside the company’s geologists to conduct field mapping and compilation work of the metals in the area.
The partnership program with MERC runs for one year with a one-year renewable option. Sherlock hopes to have a researcher in place and working in the field this spring.
The global search for deposits of cobalt in safe and socially responsible mining jurisdictions has led many exploration firms back to the historic northeastern Ontario silver mining district to secure a supply of what was once a largely discarded by-product metal.
“It’s a collaborative project,” said Sherlock. “We want to understand – as scientists – how the cobalt formed and what were the geological processes that formed it.”
The traditional school of thought is that cobalt – often regarded by early 1900s miners in the Cobalt camp as a nuisance waste rock – is always found with silver.
But the genesis of how these deposits were formed is not very well understood nor why cobalt is always associated with silver.
