Solitario Exploration & Royalty Corp.

Director - Investor Relations

Debbie Mino-Austin, 800-229-6827

or

President & CEO

Christopher E. Herald, 303-534-1030

Logo: www.solitarioxr.com

Solitario Exploration & Royalty Corp. (NYSE Alternext US: XPL; TSX: SLR) announced that it has received assay results for 19 out of 52 core drill holes completed in the last five months on its high- grade Bongara zinc-lead project in northern Peru. Highlights include spectacular results from drill hole V-44 that cut 9.3 meters grading 37.27% zinc, 2.24% lead and 70.7 grams per tonne ("gpt") silver and hole V-165 that intersected 19.0 meters grading 12.82% zinc, 0.81% lead and 29.4 gpt silver. The 52-hole, 15,000 meter program was managed and entirely funded by Solitario's joint venture partner Votorantim Metais.

The Bongara project hosts the Florida Canyon zinc deposit where high-grade zinc mineralization has been intersected in drill holes over an area at least two-by-two kilometers in dimension. The deposit is open to expansion in all directions. A complete listing of all assay results for the first 19 drill holes of 2008 can be accessed at www.solitarioxr.com/art/ 2008BongaraDrillHoleResults.jpg. Additional project information can be found at www.solitarioxr.com/bongara.html. The five best of these reported drill holes are provided in the table below:

The 2008 drilling program focused upon two separate areas. Results included in this release are from a large area measuring 600 x 350 meters in the southern part of the known footprint of mineralization. This area previously contained only two drill holes along the margin of the deposit. A second area of drilling was infill of a portion of the central part of the previously completed drill pattern. Assay results are pending for this area.

Chris Herald, President and CEO of Solitario, commented, "Even though we are still awaiting assay results for the majority of 2008 drill holes, results to date already prove that the 2008 drilling program will be the seventh consecutive successful drilling campaign completed by our joint venture partners on our Florida Canyon deposit - a truly remarkable drilling record. Votorantim's continuing drilling success in defining high-grade zinc mineralization makes us more confident in the world-class potential of this deposit. We expect to release additional drilling results within the next several weeks."

The drill hole information contained within this release is reported under a quality control program reviewed by Mr.