Researchers at Perth’s Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET) say sulphur could help find new mining deposits.

Sulphur was the material that brought gold and other minerals together in the Earth’s early days.

It now appears that the abundant element could be used as a guide to finding out which other minerals lay beneath the surface.

“Sulphur is part of the Earth's core, the mantle, the crust,” CET researcher Crystal LaFlamme has told ABC reporters.

“We can use it as a factor towards mineralisation, where the metals might be located, like precious and base metals.”

With exploration spending going down around the country, Ms LaFlamme says it could help companies find valuable new deposits.

“All the rocks that were sticking out of the ground that had deposits have been found, so now we have to look under a thick layer of soil for the future deposits,” she said.

“So we are trying to find a needle in a haystack and give companies a better idea about where to be looking.”

In tests so far, the team has taken sulphur rock samples, crushed them up, and run them through a high-tech spectrometer.

This process allows them to identify the precious metals under the surface.

Researcher and PhD student Stefano Caruso said it was exciting to operate the $6 million spectrometer at the University of Western Australia.

“We are using this incredible machine to transform a really common element such as sulphur into a powerful tracer, to track the role of the sulphur from the source to the ore deposit,” Mr Caruso said.

“We are going to look at the footprint of sulphur around the Yilgarn Craton and we are going to find out which are the fertile sources of sulphur that produce the actual ore deposit.

“By building the pathway between the fertile sources and the ore deposit, we can reapply this kind of association to uncovered terrains and into prospective areas.”

The project team says it will take a few more years before a map is ready to help companies explore for future deposits.

The WA Government put in $90,000 for the project, part of a $500,000 scholarship program designed to aid the discovery of new mines.