The Kittilä Copper-Gold Belt

Taranis controls almost 100 km2 of an area northeast of Kittilä. Understanding the regional geology and other deposits in the area is important to understanding our exploration efforts. Our geologists believe that the area currently being evaluated by Taranis has the potential to become a major copper-gold mining district!

Property Location Map (Kittilä Area)

Kittilä Copper-Gold-Cobalt-Nickel Area

The map shown below outlines the entire geology of the Kittilä Area, and shows the location of the Mining Claims and Reservations in the area. Almost all of the rocks in the area are Proterozoic in age, and occur in a broad east-west trending belt that is characterized by a large "Z-shaped" fold structure. At least two phases of deformation (folding) have occurred, and these are very important at Naakenavaara since the Naakenavaara Syncline is a structural basin that is formed by the intersection of these two phases of folding.

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One of the most important features in the area is the Sirkka Fault Zone that skirts along the north side of the "Z-shaped" fold structure, and hosts numerous gold occurrences in the area including the Kettukuusikko Project. Gold deposits are not restricted to the Sirkka Fault Zone as was believed for many years, and the discovery of the Kittilä Gold Mine (4.99 M Oz.) is a good example of this.

Gold

Gold is found in ores made up of rock with very small or microscopic particles of gold. This gold ore is often found together with quartz or sulfide minerals such as Fool's Gold, which is a pyrite. Gold's atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher atomic number elements which occur naturally. Like all elements with atomic numbers larger than iron, gold is thought to have been formed from a supernova nucleosynthesis process.

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Silver

Silver has been used for thousands of years for ornaments and utensils, for trade, and as the basis for many monetary systems. Its value as a precious metal was long considered second only to gold. The word "silver" appears in Anglo-Saxon in various spellings such as seolfor and siolfor. During World War II, the short supply of copper led to the substitution of silver in many industrial applications.

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Copper

Copper has been in use at least 10,000 years, but more than 95% of all copper ever mined and smelted has been extracted since 1900. As with many natural resources, the total amount of copper on Earth is vast (around 1014 tons just in the top kilometer of Earth's crust, or about 5 million years worth at the current rate of extraction). However, only a tiny fraction of these reserves is economically viable, given present-day prices and technologies

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Cobalt

Cobalt occurs in copper and nickel minerals and in combination with sulfur and arsenic in the sulfidic cobaltite (CoAsS), safflorite (CoAs2) and skutterudite (CoAs3) minerals. The mineral cattierite is similar to pyrite and occurs together with vaesite in the copper deposits of the Katanga Province. Cobalt is not found as a native metal but is mainly obtained as a by-product of nickel and copper mining activities.

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Lead

Roman lead pipes often bore the insignia of Roman emperors. Lead plumbing in the Latin West may have been continued beyond the age of Theoderic the Great into the medieval period. Many Roman "pigs" (ingots) of lead figure in Derbyshire lead mining history and in the history of the industry in other English centers. The Romans also used lead in molten form to secure iron pins that held together large limestone blocks in buildings.

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Zinc

Various isolated examples of the use of impure zinc in ancient times have been discovered. A possibly prehistoric statuette containing 87.5% zinc was found in a Dacian archaeological site in Transylvania (modern Romania). Ornaments made of alloys that contain 80–90% zinc with lead, iron, antimony, and other metals making up the remainder, have been found that are 2500 years old.

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