2,492-Carat Diamond in Botswana Is Second-Largest to Ever Be Found — and the Biggest in Over a Century

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

2,492-Carat Diamond in Botswana Is Second-Largest to Ever Be Found — and the Biggest in Over a Century

“I am lucky to have seen it in my time,” Botswana’s president Mokgweetsi Masisi said

Monirul Bhuiyan/AFP/Getty

Botswana" fifu-data-src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/Qby.tWj67togKuiLmurEYw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/people_218/9428f56894f8c705e80c3898d3915270">data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

Monirul Bhuiyan/AFP/Getty

Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi holds a large diamond

The largest diamond to be unearthed in more than a century has been

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, a country in Southern *******.

Botswana’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, and William Lamb, President and CEO of Lucara Diamond Corp. — the ********* mining company that found the precious stone — announced the discovery on Thursday, Aug. 22.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

Monirul Bhuiyan/AFP/Getty

large diamond discovered in Botswana, August 2024

In a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, Lucara called the find “remarkable,” adding that the 2,492-carat diamond is “one of the largest rough diamonds ever unearthed.”

The company found the jewel in Botswana’s Karowe Diamond Mine by using “X-ray Transmission (XRT) technology, installed in 2017 to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds.”

Related:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

The diamond, which has yet to be named, is the second-largest to be discovered since the 3,106-carat Cullinan Diamond was found 119 years ago in South ******* in 1905,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

reported.

“It is overwhelming,” Masisi said, per

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. “I am lucky to have seen it in my time.”

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

Monirul Bhuiyan/AFP/Getty

Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi looks at a large diamond discovered in Botswana at his office in Gaborone on August 22, 2024

As senior government officials got a chance to marvel at the sight, Masisi couldn’t help but to add, “Wow.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

According to CNN and the AP, no price point has been set for the recent find. However, a significantly smaller diamond found in the same Botswana mine was sold in 2016 for $63 million, an unprecedented price.

“This is history in the making,” Naseem Lahri, Botswana’s managing director for Lucara Diamond Corp., said. “I am very proud. It is a product of Botswana.”

Never miss a story — sign up for

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

While it ******** too early to tell the fate of Botswana’s second-largest diamond, the Cullinan Diamond was cut into gems, with some becoming parts of the British Crown Jewels.

Diamonds are formed when carbon atoms are squeezed together under high pressure deep underground, notes the AP. Scientists say most diamonds are at least a billion years old and some of them are more than 3 billion years old.

In the late 1800s, a notable diamond discovery was also a larger, but less pure ****** diamond found in Brazil. Per the AP, the gem was “found above ground and was believed to have been part of a meteorite.”

For more People news, make sure to

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Read the original article on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#2492Carat #Diamond #Botswana #SecondLargest #Biggest #Century

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up