Curtin University researchers studying diamond-rich rocks from Western Australia's Argyle volcano have identified the missing third key ingredient needed to bring valuable pink diamonds to the Earth's surface where they can be mined, which could greatly help in the global hunt for new deposits.
Lead researcher Dr. Hugo Olierook, from Curtin's John de Laeter Center, said the"stretching" of landmasses created gaps in the Earth's crust through which diamond-carrying magma could rise to the surface.smaller than the width of a human hair on rocks supplied by Rio Tinto, we found Argyle to be 1.3 billion years old, which is 100 million years older than previously thought, meaning it would likely have formed as a result of an ancient supercontinent breaking apart," Dr.
"While the continent that would become Australia didn't break up, the area where Argyle is situated was stretched, including along the scar, which created gaps in the Earth's crust for magma to shoot up through to the surface, bringing with it pink diamonds. Dr. Olierook said even with the knowledge of these three ingredients, finding another trove of pink diamonds will not be without its challenges.
"Argyle is at the suture of two of these ancient continents, and these edges are often covered by sand and soil, leaving the possibility that similar pink diamond-bearing volcanoes still sit undiscovered, including in Australia."
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