Visitor discovers 'Big Ugly Diamond' in US state park

A visitor discovered a diamond at an Arkansas state park and dubbed it "Bud". "That's for 'Big, Ugly Diamond,'" stated David Anderson, who was the lucky tourist to discover the gem in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The 3.29-carat brown diamond was discovered by Anderson at Crater of Diamonds State Park on March 4. Every day, one or two diamonds are discovered by visitors in the park which the authorities allow them to keep.

The man found the gem on a Saturday trip when he was visiting the park's 37.5-acre diamond searching zone, said the park officials in a press release on Wednesday.

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"At first I thought it was quartz but wondered why it was so shiny. Once I picked it up, I realised it was a diamond,” Anderson said.

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Anderson added that he has been visiting the park since the first time he heard about it on TV in 2007. "After I found my first diamond, a 1.5-carat white, I was hooked," he stated, adding that since then he has been able to find more than 400 diamonds.

Among his diamond collections are a 3.83-carat yellow diamond which he found in 2011 and a 6.19-carat white diamond which was discovered by him in 2014.

Like other visitors, Anderson said that he also plans to sell the diamond he has recently found to the jewellers in his area.

Park Interpreter Tayler Markham said that the rare stone was "about the size of an English pea, with a light brown colour and octahedron shape".

The rounded and smooth edges of the recent diamond discovered by Anderson are typical, considering the "resorption" during the eruption because the diamonds of the park came to the surface.

This is the largest diamond found in the park since September 2021, when a visitor discovered a 4.38-carat yellow diamond. This year, visitors have so far found 124 diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Visitors in the park are allowed to rent sifting and digging tools, and free identification for minerals and rocks discovered in the park is offered by the park rangers.

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Since 1906, people have found more than 75,000 diamonds in the park. Among those, around 35,000 were discovered by the people after the region was converted into a state park in 1972.

The site is also the same place where researchers discovered the largest diamond ever found in the country. Experts had unearthed a white diamond with a pink cast, which weighed around 40.23 carats, in 1924 from the site.

The diamond, dubbed the "Uncle Sam", has been put on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.

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