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Mineral Occurrences: Forgotten discoveries providing new leads for mineral supply

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Demand for critical minerals, vital for advanced technologies, is increasing. This study shows that Australia’s richly endowed geological provinces contain numerous undeveloped or abandoned mineral occurrences that could potentially lead to new economic resources. Three study areas were assessed for critical mineral occurrences through database interrogation and literature review, namely the Barkly-Isa-Georgetown (BIG), Darling-Curnamona-Delamerian (DCD) and Officer-Musgrave (OM) project areas. The study found approximately 20,000 mineral occurrences across the three areas, with just over half occurring in the DCD region. Critical minerals were recognised in ~10% of all occurrences in BIG, ~10% in DCD and 70% in OM. Gold and base metal occurrences comprise 48% (OM), 81% (DCD) and 82% (BIG) of all occurrences in the study areas, with these metals in the DCD and BIG historically and presently important. This large-scale analysis and literature review of Australia’s forgotten mineral discoveries identifies potential new sources of critical minerals and, with the addition of mineralisation style to the data, contributes to predictive exploration methodology that will further unlock the nation’s critical mineral potential. These data are available through the Exploring for the Future portal (https://portal.ga.gov.au/persona/eftf). Citation: Kucka C., Senior A. & Britt A., 2022. Mineral Occurences: Forgotten discoveries providing new leads for mineral supply. In: Czarnota, K. (ed.) Exploring for the Future: Extended Abstracts, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/146983

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Mineral Occurrences: Forgotten discoveries providing new leads for mineral supply
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/49cc9793-b6be-485a-9fd0-5bd021691ec6
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 27/06/2022
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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    ]
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  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Mineral Occurrences: Forgotten discoveries providing new leads for mineral supply". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/mineral-occurrences-forgotten-discoveries-providing-new-leads-for-mineral-supply