Mel Lintern who is the CSIRO's team, found gum trees bringing up gold from a depth of up to 30 metres to the surface. He says this is groundbreaking research to actually locate the gold in living tissue. His team was not expecting this, but that seeing the gold particles in the leaves was quite a Eureka moment for them.
He stated, "These trees are sort of telling us what's going on below the ground, and the eucalypts and acacia trees that we did the research on appear to be bringing up the gold from a remarkable 30-metre depth."
Using tree specimens to identify possible mineral deposits could conceivably slash the costs of multi-million dollar drilling and exploration programs. This development in bio-prospecting could be an adjunct to normal prospective practices. The exploration is in the Kalgoorlie Boulder Region (Australia) where the rocks are laterite. This indicates that they are ancient and highly weathered. This is why he believes the gum trees were able to show the traces of gold. Eucalypts tend to grow in areas of deep weathering where it's known for volcanic rock (greenstone belt). It's a great breakthrough to be able to identify this.
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