
Prospectors who search only for gold, especially placer gold, are likely to walk over a great deal more treasure than they find. Limiting prospecting to one type of exploration can be an expensive and time-consuming enterprise that may leave the searcher thoroughly frustrated at the end of the hunt.
Gold and gemstones have a lot in common. Both are much heavier than sand and gravels and will settle out together in the same running water pools and will usually be found together on bedrock. Diversifying your equipment to recover more than one type of treasure is an important aspect of the prospectors arsenal. Any time you decide to work a particular area for one type of treasure, you might just as well get all the goodies it holds. Many prospectors merely scratch the surface in their efforts, find nothing, and become completely disheartened with the entire operation.
Recognizing rock and mineral associations and understanding regional geology is important. The successful prospector must not only focus on regional geology, but also on surrounding host rocks, mineral and rock associations & geological environments. Much of Canada is underlain by a stable continental core known as a Craton. Cratons consist of older continental cores referred to as Archons (rocks greater than 2.5 billion years old), Protons consisting of Early Proterozoic age basement rocks (1.8 to 2.5 billion years) and Tectons (Late Proterozoic basement rocks, 1.8 to about 600 million years old).
So what does all this mean? Well, using geological reasoning, a Canadian group headed to the Northwest Territories of Canada and after considerable time, discovered diamond-rich kimberlite at Lac de Gras that now is marked by one of the largest diamond mining facilities in the world.
