Mantle Mining Corporation drills for gold/silver in Queensland 

(MENAFN - ProactiveInvestors - Australia) Mantle Mining Corporation (ASX: MNM) will start drilling 43 reverse circulation holes targeting a new prospect at its Granite Castle gold and silver project in Queensland this weekend.

The program, totalling 3,800 metres, is the first drilling at Granite Castle since the company's activities were impacted from mid-2008 by first the Global Financial Crisis then more recently; the prolonged North Australian wet seasons.

With the total JORC Resource of 847,078 tonnes at 2.91 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 56.2g/t silver contained in a 600 metre portion of one shear and over 14 linear kilometres of similar shares identified to date, Mantle believes there is excellent potential to deliver a major expansion of the resource base.

The drilling will start at Tag Alley targeting gold anomalous breccia in volcanics. This will test the Coronation shear at nominal 80 metre spacing.

This approach allows for a second, infill drilling program in 2013 targeting the best areas designed to deliver an upgrade to the JORC base.

Mantle is also examining an aerial radiometric and magnetic survey that identified a linear radiometric anomaly north of Granite Castle.

Field reconnaissance of this area has confirmed poor outcrop, but weathered exposures of microgranite and a coarse granite-biotite fragmental has been identified.

Rock chip sampling has also returned low grade rare earth values of up to 524ppm Cerium, 138.5ppm Lanthanum and 119.5ppm Thorium, which are suggest of "hot" granite and probably monazite.

However, the extent of the anomalism " at least 4 kilometres long and up to 2 kilometres wide " suggests a large prospective volume that may contain higher grade zones of interest.