Leviathan Gold Ltd. announced that it has commenced drilling at the historic Leviathan Mine within the Company's Timor property. This initial phase of work, which is expected to comprise at least 3,000 meters of diamond drilling, has been designed to target strike and depth projections of known high-grade gold mineralization in underground mine workings understood to have been abandoned in 1905. Recorded historic production for the Leviathan Mine - itself an amalgam of closely adjacent shafts and underground workings - is 181,000 tonnes for 67,511 ounces of gold at a grade of 11.4 g/t Au1. Compilation and review of historic mining records and plans together with modern field work by Leviathan's geological team suggests that gold mineralization at the historic Leviathan Mine is open along strike and at depth - presenting clear drill targets immediately beneath abandoned mine workings, including areas underground development drives that were never fully exploited. These targets occur from depths as shallow as ~70 meters. Mineralization at the Leviathan Mine is known to occur as quartz veins, stockworks and spurs within a broad north-south trending fault system, itself comprising numerous individual faults. Where mineralized, these are locally termed "reefs". By 1862 approximately 90 such reefs were reportedly known in the area of Leviathan Mine, with production records suggesting that such occurrences produced "more than an ounce of gold per tonne". Writing in 1913 - subsequent to the closure of the Leviathan Mine - the Geological Survey of Victoria observed: Within the area contemplated by current drilling, repeated parallel to sub-parallel reef targets extend over an area of at least 130 meters laterally and in excess of 750 meters of strike. Preliminary indications are that this fault system persists for several kilometers to the north of the current target, and that parallel systems appear to exist to both its east and its west. These occurrences will be reported on in due course. Hard rock gold mineralization in the area of Leviathan Mine furthermore appears to have been a significant source for the rich alluvial gold deposits that extend for kilometers downstream of the Leviathan Mine in an area known as the Chinaman's Flat Lead - the scene of a major gold rush in the 1850's. At this time some 30,000 diggers were reportedly engaged in mining on the Lead, with reports suggesting an average yield for the Lead of "four ounces gold to the load" and that grades in many shafts ranged from 2 kilograms to 5 kilograms gold per cubic metre. It is understood that historic operation of the Leviathan Mine ceased due to the inability of the mining, metallurgical and pumping techniques of the day to perform economically at the required depths. The Victorian goldfields are one of the world's major gold provinces, with recorded historic production in excess of 2,500 tonnes - or over 80 million ounces – of gold since their discovery in 18516. The Avoca and Timor projects comprise 223 square kilometers of exploration tenements within these goldfields, approximately 180 kilometers north west of the state capital of Melbourne. The Projects are well-served by modern infrastructure, are easily accessible via paved roads, and fall less than 100 kilometers from the regional cities of Bendigo and Ballarat, both long-established centers of mining services and expertise. The Projects are located within an area of the Victorian goldfields, the golden triangle, that is home to large scale gold deposits with long and very prominent histories of production such as those at Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine. More recently, major discoveries have also been made at the Fosterville Gold Mine near Bendigo (operated by Kirkland Lake Gold, recently merged with Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.), which boasts reserves of 1.70 million ounces at an average grade of 23.1 g/t Au, including 1.16 million ounces at an average grade of 61.2 g/t Au7. Within the area being explored by Leviathan Gold hundreds of small historical gold mines are known to have existed within a 50 km radius of Avoca and Timor. The Avoca and Timor projects were the subject of historical mining between the 1850's and the early 1900's, during which era operations targeted so-called alluvial and "deep lead" gold occurrences – buried secondary auriferous river-bed deposits - as well as primary vein-hosted mineralization developed via shaft and underground stoping methods. Such operations reportedly produced some 1.3 million ounces of gold in the Avoca and Timor project areas alone, the majority of this arising from alluvial and "deep lead" mining - a function of the richness of the alluvial mineralization around Maryborough, so great that it eclipsed the importance of reef mining. As such little capital was available for deep hard rock development3. The mining, water removal and ore processing methods of the day were rudimentary, such that only isolated extraction of shallow, near-surface, visible, high-grade mineralization was possible, resulting in only very selective and discontinuous mining. Over fifty such gold occurrences are known within the Projects, and despite this prodigious endowment, no systematic exploration of the Projects has occurred. With only limited exploration work having been recorded since WW1, numerous targets to test, and mineralization potentially open to depth at most of these, a rare opportunity exists for Leviathan to pursue a consolidated approach in the exploration of near-surface mineralization using modern drilling, geochemical and geophysical techniques. Historical records are not historical resource estimates, but instead are official Government records of gold production from individual mines. Historical production records do not carry a comparable confidence level to a current Mineral Resource estimate reported in accordance with CIM standards for resource estimation and should not be treated as such. Leviathan does not treat historical production records as indicators of a current mineral resource or mineral reserve.