VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Oct. 26, 2009 (Marketwire) -- Cream Minerals Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:CMA)(OTCBB:CRMXF)(FRANKFURT:DFL) ("Cream" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that historical exploration programs conducted on behalf of Casierra Diamond Corporation and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Casierra Development Fund Inc. (collectively, Casierra) and more recently Cream Minerals identified heavy minerals and some rare earths in the beach sands and near shore marine sediments contained within the Company's Offshore Exploration Concession, Sierra Leone.
The off shore alluvial deposits targeted by Cream Minerals offer a potentially low capital cost opportunity to develop a possible industrial scale source of new gem quality diamond production together with a heavy minerals co-product. The heavy minerals are referenced by the Geological Survey of Sierra Leone in a map compiled by The Council for Geoscience of South Africa. In addition the Geological Survey of Sierra Leone references heavy minerals in the long shore beach sands adjacent to the offshore area of the license. Also reports summarizing exploration work and laboratory tests conducted by the Malaysia Mining Corporation (MMC) on behalf of Casierra in 1996 and filed with the Sierra Leone Mines Department indicate heavy minerals concentrations. They include zircon, ilmenite, rutile and monazite (a source of rare earths) which occur in the offshore sediments associated with diamonds.
Summary of Historical Exploration Work
In August, 1994, Casierra was granted offshore prospecting licences for diamond exploration. A geophysical survey and geological sampling program were conducted in 1995 to obtain information on the geology of the marine sediments. A second-phase exploration program was carried out in 1996 by MMC. A total of 20 market diamonds were recovered with 80% being gem quality; one of these was 1.22 carats in weight. The diamonds were recovered while sampling magnetic anomalies due to concentrations of heavy minerals, including magnetite in the marine sediments. Only two of the sample sites were deep enough to intersect higher grade magnetite that actually reflected the magnetic anomalies investigated.
In 2005, Cream Minerals entered into a joint venture with Casierra, and completed a detailed magnetometer survey with independent Russian geophysical contractor Yuzmorgeologia which had carried out the 1995 survey work. Vertical gradient magnetic anomalies were identified in this survey which covered 10 km2 of the 88 km2 licence area and indicated prospective targets with more than 170 million cubic meters of near-surface marine sediments with potential for diamonds.
No work was carried out to assess the heavy mineral beach sands potential of the licence for economic minerals other than the diamonds.
