A French tourist discovered a giant 7.46-carat diamond after stopping at an Arkansas state park during a road trip this month.
Paris resident Julien Navas discovered the giant rock on the surface of Crater of Diamonds State Park while searching a 37.5-acre search area on January 11th. state officials said.
He was in the US to witness a rocket launch in Florida before making plans to check out Bourbon Street in New Orleans with friends.
But along the way, he learned about the Razorback State's world-famous state park, known for its glitz, and wanted to make a pit stop, park officials said.
Navas has previously mined for gold and searched for ammonite fossils, but after heavy rains hit the area a few days ago, he borrowed basic diamond hunting kit and started digging in the dirt. .
“It was arduous work, so until the afternoon we were mainly looking for anything noticeable on the ground,” Navas said.
After a few more hours of searching and picking up potential treasures, he went to the park's center to see if he did indeed have the real prize.
The deep chocolate brown marble-like object turned out to be a 7.46 carat diamond. This is the park's largest discovery since 2020 and the eighth largest discovery in the park's history since it opened in 1972.
The diamond is about the size of a candy gumdrop, the park said.
“So happy!” he reportedly said when he noticed the expensive items he had snatched. “All I'm thinking about is telling my fiancé what I found.”
He named the stone Karine Diamond after his partner and plans to cut it into two diamonds, one for his fiancée and one for his daughter.
More than 75,000 diamonds have been picked up at Crater of Diamonds State Park since the first sparkling treasure was discovered by a farmer decades ago.
The largest diamond ever recovered in the United States was discovered in 1924 during a mining operation on land that later became a state park.
