1,111 carat diamond
Canadian diamond miner Lucara Mining says it has found what is thought to be the second largest diamond in history. The stone measures 1,111 carats, a gem the size of a tennis ball. TSX-listed and Vancouver-based Lucara said in a Wednesday it had found the enormous stone on the south lobe of the company’s Karowe Mine in Botswana on Monday. It is described as “gem quality, Type IIa,” and its dimensions are 65 by 56 by 40 millimetres. One caret is equal to a fifth of a gram, so Lucara’s 1,111-carat diamond weighs 222 grams. This would make newly-found stone the biggest gem-quality diamond discovered since the famed Cullinan diamond measuring more than 3,000 carats was found in South Africa in 1905. The Cullinan was subsequently cut into smaller pieces, with the two largest portions incorporated into Britain’s Crown Jewels. “The significance of the recovery of a gem-quality stone larger than 1,000 carats, the largest for more than a century … cannot be overstated,” Lucara CEO William Lamb said. On Thursday, Lucara announced it had found two more large diamonds, one measuring 813 carats — the sixth largest ever recovered — and another measuring 374 carats in the same vein.
