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The El Sauzal mine is producing gold from a typical epithermal, high-sulfidation or quartz-alunite, oxide, gold deposit on the Sierra Madre gold trend of northern Mexico. The gold mineralization is within a thick east-to-northeast-dipping succession of Late Cretaceous to Tertiary volcanic rocks of the Lower and Upper Volcanic Series of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The host rocks are dominated by dacitic to rhyolitic pyroclastic units, which in turn are overlain and intruded by sparsely porhyritic, flow-banded rhyolite and porphyritic hornblende andesite. Gold is found in steeply to moderately dipping, tabular to irregular cores of vuggy, residual quartz, which are mantled by more aerially extensive bodies of quartz-alunite-kaolinite alteration. The alteration and gold mineralization follow a general east-west trend.
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