Miners in Botswana have unearthed a diamond unlike any seen before—a rough stone weighing 37.41 carats and split into two sharp zones of color: pink and colorless. Its distinct appearance hints at a geological history marked by extreme forces deep within the Earth. The discovery is now under detailed study by researchers at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).
According to Live Science and a detailed report published by the GIA, the specimen offers rare insight into how colored diamonds form, and why pink diamonds remain among the most elusive on Earth.
Born Under Pressure: The Diamond With A Two-Stage History
The newly found gem measures approximately 24.3 by 16 by 14.5 millimeters and weighs just over 37 carats, yet what truly captivates geologists is its clear division into two color zones—one half colorless, the other an intense pink. What makes this diamond so exceptional is not just its size or beauty, but its formation history.
According to Sally Eaton-Magaña, senior manager of diamond identification at GIA, the diamond likely formed in two distinct stages, each millions of years apart.
“The pink section likely was initially colorless and then plastically deformed, perhaps by a mountain-forming event millions of years ago, resulting in its pink color, with the colorless section forming at a later time,” Eaton-Magaña explained in a statement shared with Live Science.
This kind of internal deformation is rare, requiring precise pressure and temperature conditions within Earth’s mantle. Too much deformation, and a diamond turns brown. Too little, and no color appears at all. That’s why pink diamonds are seen as geological anomalies—formed not through impurities like other colored gems, but through stress that subtly twists their carbon lattice structure.
Why Pink Diamonds Are Like “Goldilocks” In Geology
Understanding pink diamonds involves decoding a delicate geological balance. While impurities like nitrogen or radiation typically explain most colored diamonds, the pink hue is born from something more elusive—plastic deformation of the crystal structure.
“It’s kind of like Goldilocks,” said Luc Doucet, senior research geologist at Curtin University in Australia, in comments to Live Science. “There are a lot of brown diamonds, and very, very few pink diamonds.”
That’s because the precise deformation needed to shift a diamond’s hue into the pink spectrum is extraordinarily rare. The new Botswana diamond offers scientists a rare chance to examine that transformation, thanks to the bicolor split that shows a clear before-and-after state: one half unaltered and colorless, the other marked by the slow violence of Earth’s crust in motion.
The GIA’s full analysis confirms that the boundary between the two zones is sharp and natural, proving that the diamond did not develop its colors post-formation, as with radiation-induced green diamonds. This one was truly forged in the planet’s deep, shifting interior.
A Gem Born In Karowe, A Mine That Keeps Surprising The World
The diamond was discovered at the Karowe Mine in Botswana, a site already famous for delivering some of the world’s most impressive stones. Among them: the Boitumelo, a 62-carat pink diamond, and the legendary Motswedi, the second-largest rough diamond ever found, weighing a staggering 2,488 carats.
What distinguishes this latest find, however, is not only its rarity but the context it offers into the physics of diamond formation. The Karowe Mine is located near the craton zone—stable, ancient sections of Earth’s lithosphere—where diamonds are believed to have formed more than 1.5 billion years ago.
It’s in these regions, deep beneath Earth’s crust and under high heat and pressure, that carbon atoms bind tightly together, forming the perfect lattice structure that defines diamonds. But structural changes due to tectonic uplift or orogenic events can cause distortions—just enough, in this case, to create the optical properties that cause pink coloration.
In this light, the Botswana gem becomes more than a rare find—it becomes an orbital marker in the timeline of Earth’s evolving crust, a geological snapshot frozen in carbon.
Pink, But Not Alone: Other Bicolor Diamonds And What They Reveal
While this is not the first pink-and-colorless diamond ever found, it is by far the largest. Similar bicolor stones examined by the GIA have weighed no more than 2 carats, making this 37-carat behemoth a clear outlier in both scale and scientific value.
The implications of this diamond’s size and dual nature go beyond gemology and touch on deep-time geological processes. It confirms that conditions for pink diamond formation can persist over long spans, and that diamonds may grow in phases, separated by seismic or mountain-building events that alter lattice structures without completely destroying them.
This raises new questions: Could more such bicolor gems be hidden in other cratonic regions? Could their size and color help refine models of diamond growth rates or mantle dynamics? The answers may lie in future finds—or within the tools of spectroscopy and strain mapping, now being applied to this very gem.
Every Diamond, wherever it is discovered in the world, is inspected and evaluated, if it’s big enuf for commercial use. But millions of tiny Diamond are not recovered or used as an abrasive.
To find additional bicolored stones, we should pay more attention to the small sized diamonds, to find the location for additional gems like this
BOSTWANA should be the real profiteers and investing in education and other development projects.