Editor’s Note
This article details the remarkable discovery of a 552-carat yellow diamond at the Diavik mine, a find that shatters previous records for North America.
A 552-carat yellow diamond has been extracted from the Diavik mine, located 300 km northeast of Yellowknife, announced the mining company Dominion. It could be worth several million dollars.
The diamond, measuring 3.3 cm wide and 5.4 cm high, was discovered last October. It weighs three times more than the FoxFire diamond, found in 2015 in the same mine, which previously held the record for the largest diamond in North America.
It remains far behind the largest diamond ever discovered in the world, the Cullinan, at 3106 carats.
The Diavik mine is owned by Dominion Diamond Mines, a Calgary-based company, and Rio Tinto, an international mining company.
The diamond was extracted using the crushing method.
Dominion Diamond Mines states that it will seek one of the world’s best diamond cutters to cut and polish the precious stone.
Only after that will the company be able to evaluate the price of the diamond, which is expected to amount to several million dollars. The FoxFire stone was purchased for 1.3 million US dollars.
According to the statement, Dominion Diamond Mines’ diamonds are extracted responsibly and are subject to independent tracking from extraction to sale.
Dominion also operates the Ekati mine, where 150 jobs were threatened last May.