The uncut diamond weighs an astonishing 2,492 carats. It was discovered 500 kilometers from Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, by workers from Lucara Diamond, a company specializing in diamond exploration and mining.
This giant stone is second in weight only to the legendary Cullinan diamond, which weighs 3,106 carats (or 621 grams). The Cullinan was found in 1905 in a South African mine, as reported by IFLScience.
What We Know About the Discovery
The newly found diamond was extracted in Botswana using a technology known as Mega Diamond Recovery X-ray Transmission, or MDR XRT.
This is significant because, during the mining process, valuable finds can be accidentally damaged. The company assured that the cutting-edge MDR XRT technology works “like a baggage scanner at the airport,” effectively preventing any harm to the discovered gemstones.
William Lamb, the president and CEO of the company, stated that his team is “thrilled with the discovery.” Although they are no strangers to major finds, as Lucara Diamond employees have previously uncovered record diamonds such as the Lesedi La Rona, weighing 1,109 carats, and the Sewelô, weighing 1,758 carats. The latter was considered the largest diamond ever mined in Botswana and was purchased by the luxury brand Louis Vuitton.
Diamonds of this caliber are important not only as future status symbols but also because they can reveal much about the history of our planet. For instance, authors of a study conducted last year analyzed “ultra-deep” diamonds aged between 650 and 450 million years, found in Brazil and West Africa. As a result, scientists learned a great deal about the formation of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.