Aureus Mining Inc. - Exercise of Options

ORONTO, March 16, 2012 - Aureus Mining Inc. ("Aureus" or the "Company") announces the exercise of 75,000 options by Luis da Silva, a Non-Executive Director of the Company, at an exercise price of C$0.73 (c.47p). His resulting holding is detailed below:

Director  Number of Options  Total number of Options  Current Shareholding  Percentage of enlarged
              Exercised    Held Following the Exercise    in Aureus      issued share capital
Luis da Silva     75,000              1,332,500                   74,826            0.06

The new Common Shares will rank pari passu with the Company's existing Common Shares.

The shares issued as a result of the option exercise are being issued under the Company's existing blocklisting. Following the issue, the total issued share capital of the Company will be 118,101,051 Common Shares, all of which have voting rights.

The above figure (118,101,051) may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, Aureus Mining Inc.


About Aureus Mining

The Company's assets include the New Liberty gold deposit in Liberia (the "New Liberty Gold Project"), which has an estimated Reserve of 873,000 ounces of gold grading 3.1 g/t and an estimated Measured and Indicated Mineral Resource of 1,086,000 ounces of gold grading 3.6 g/t and an estimated Inferred Mineral Resource of 483,000 ounces of gold grading 3.5 g/t. A technical update for the New Liberty gold project was released on February 2, 2012, derisking and building on the robust preliminary economic assessment ("PEA"), filed in December 2010. This update outlined an improved pre-tax NPV of US$260 million based on a US$1,350/oz. gold price and a discount rate of 8%, with an eight year mine life and production of 123,000 ounces per year modelled for the first four years.

The New Liberty Gold Project is located within the Bea Mountain mining license which covers 457km² and has a 25 year, renewable, mineral development agreement. The Bea Mountain mining license also hosts the proximal gold targets of Ndablama, Weaju, Silver Hills and Gondoja, which are the focus of exploration programs during 2012.

The Company also has gold assets within exploration properties in Cameroon.



For further information:

Aureus Mining Inc.
David Reading / Jeremy Cave
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7257 2930

RBC Capital Markets
Nominated Advisor and Joint Broker: Martin Eales / Richard Hughes / Jonathan Hardy
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7653 4000

GMP Securities Europe LLP
Joint Broker: Richard Greenfield / Alexandra Carse
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7647 2800

Buchanan
Bobby Morse / James Strong
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7466 5000