Glacial drift exploration methods are well established and widely used by mineral industry exploring for blind deposit in northern territories, and rely on the dispersion of mineral or chemical signal in sediments derived from an eroded mineralized source. Gold grains themselves are the prime indicator minerals to be used for the detection of blind gold deposits. Surprisingly, very little attention has been dedicated to the information that size and shape of gold grain can provide, other than a simple shape classification based on modification affecting the grains that are induced in the course of sediment transport. With the advent of automated scanning electron microscope (SEM)-based gold grain detection, high magnification backscattered electron images of each grain are routinely acquired, which can be used for accurate size measurement and shape analysis. A library with 88,613 gold grain images has been accumulated from various glacial sediment surveys on the Canadian Shield and used to detect trends in grains size and shape. A series of conclusions are drawn: (1) grain size distribution is consistent among various surveys and areas, (2) there is no measurable fine-grained gold loss due to natural elutriation in ablation or reworked till, or during the course of reverse circulation drilling, (3) there is no grain size sorting during glacial transport, severing small grains from large ones, (4) shape modification induced by transport is highly dependent on grain size and original shapes, and (5) the use of grain shape inherited from neighboring minerals in the source rocks is a useful feature when assessing deposit types and developing exploration strategies.

The discovery of new mineral deposits contributes to the sustainable mineral industrial development, which is essential to satisfy global resource demands. The exploration for new mineral resources is challenging in Canada since its vast lands are mostly covered by a thick layer of Quaternary sediments that obscure bedrock geology. In the course of the recent decades, indicator minerals recovered from till heavy mineral concentrates have been effectively used to prospect for a broad range of mineral deposits including diamond, gold, and base metals. However, these methods traditionally focus on (visual) investigation of the 0.25–2.0 mm grain-size fraction of unconsolidated sediments, whilst our observations emphasize on higher abundance, or sometimes unique occurrence of precious metal (Au, Ag, and platinum-group elements) minerals in the finer-grained fractions (<0.25 mm). This study aims to present the advantages of applying a mineral detection routine initially developed for gold grains counting and characterization, to platinum-group minerals in <50 µm till heavy mineral concentrates. This technique, which uses an automated scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive spectrometer, can provide quantitative mineralogical and semi-quantitative chemical data of heavy minerals of interest, simultaneously. This work presents the mineralogical and chemical characteristics, the grain size distribution, and the surface textures of 2664 discrete platinum-group mineral grains recovered from the processing of 5194 glacial sediment samples collected from different zones in the Canadian Shield (mostly Quebec and Ontario provinces). Fifty-eight different platinum-group mineral species have been identified to date, among which sperrylite (PtAs₂) is by far the most abundant (n = 1488; 55.86%). Textural and mineral-chemical data suggest that detrital platinum-group minerals in the studied samples have been derived, at least in part, from Au-rich ore systems.

The quantitative and qualitative assessment of gold grains from samples of glacial till is a well-established method for exploring gold deposits hidden under glaciated cover. This method, which is widely used in the industry and has resulted in numerous successes in locating gold deposits in glaciated terrain, is still based on artisanal gravity separation techniques and visual identification. However, being artisanal, it is limited by inconsistent recoveries and difficulties associated with visually identifying the predominantly small gold grains. These limitations hinder its capacity to decipher subtle or complex signals. To improve detection limits through the recovery of small gold grains, a new approach has recently been introduced into the industry, which is commercially referred to as the “ARTGold” procedure. This procedure involves the use of an optimized miniature sluice box coupled with an automated scanning electron microscopy routine. The capabilities of this improved method were highlighted in this study by comparing till surveys conducted around the Borden gold deposit (Ontario, Canada) using the conventional and improved methods at both local and regional scales. Relative to that with the conventional approach, the improved method increased the recovery of gold grains from samples (regional and down-ice mineralization) by almost one order of magnitude. (regional and down-ice mineralization), dominantly in regard of the small size fractions. Increasing the counts in low-abundance regional samples allows for a better discrimination between background signals and significant dispersions. The described method offers an alternative for improving the characterization of gold dispersal in glaciated terrain and related gold deposit footprints.