During 1996, Champion Resources, Inc., in connection with other Canadian exploration companies, conducted exploration for gold in and around Minas de Oro, Honduras.  The project area covered approximately 97 km2.  The stratigraphy in the project area is Jurassic Todos Santos Formation, consisting of conglomerates, red beds, and carbonate-cemented sands overlain by Cretaceous Yojoa limestones which are, in turn, overlain by Cretaceous Valle de Angeles Group, another sequence of red beds and limestones.  This sequence has been intruded by Tertiary(?) Minas de Oro granodiorite and later feldspar porphyry.  Copper-gold mineralization occurs in skarn at the base of the Yojoa limestone in numerous places within the project area.  Skarn consists of very fine-grained siliceous endoskarn to massive medium-grained garnet exoskarn. Deep weathering and oxidation have occurred in some areas where skarn has been fractured and subaerially exposed.  Primary mineralization occurs as massive sulfide (pyrite-pyrrhotite-chalcopyrite) replacement of Yojoa Limestone, and quartz-pyrite-pyrrhotite-chalcopyrite veins, veinlets, and breccia fill in Todos Santos conglomerates and sands. In unoxidized skarn, gold occurs as irregular grains of electrum along mineral-grain boundaries and as encapsulated grains in oxides and sulfides.  Although Champion has withdrawn from the project other companies continue exploration and testing of this interesting copper-gold skarn.

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