Showings of copper in bedrock outcroppings are not hard to find in Arizona. What is increasing rare, however, is finding such without proximate evidence of previous exploration - no hammer marks where chips had been taken, or other evidence of surficial sampling - trenching, pits, etc.

There is lots of real estate out there, and it's not possible that every square metre of ground has been walked upon by others, including experts. The larger the exposure, the easier it is to find, or course, so the more obvious become early discoveries.

By way of example, and merely as a lay person, I've discovered numbers of previously unknown/unregisted archeological findings of some significance. In one case, I even found a terraced habitation/cultivation site on a new trail on public land where the route had been investigated by registered archeologists who came up with nothing (and with several years of hikers also having passed that way). Small bits of pottery, lithics, foundations, and terrace walls were clearly visible to a trained eye if viewed from the right spot on the line of the trail, AND in the trail. ...same thing as to geological features, IMO.

That site, by the way, has since been investigated and registered, but has not been disclosed to the public. Sometimes preservation is about silence.

Anyway, a small showing of malachite is not evidence of the tonnage required to make a copper mine, but it could be. That's where we are with this news in what could well be a grass-roots discovery.

VP