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[00:01.50] Miners in Botswana recently unearthed what officials say is the second largest diamond in mining history.

[00:12.66] The country’s president Mokgweetsi Masisi presented the large stone to the public at a ceremony last week.

[00:22.75] The 2,492-carat gem is the biggest diamond to be discovered since 1905.

[00:32.32] The diamond weighs around a half-kilogram.

[00:36.57] Masisi was one of the first people to get to hold it.

[00:41.89] He expressed surprise at the diamond’s heaviness and told the gathering, “I am lucky to have seen it in my time."

[00:51.71] Lucara Diamond, a Canadian mining company, found the stone.

[00:57.55] Company officials said it was too early to value the gem or decide how it would be sold.

[01:06.05] A smaller uncut diamond from the same mine in Botswana sold for a record $63 million in 2016.

[01:17.49] Naseem Lahri is a director with Lucara’s Botswana team.

[01:23.05] “This is history in the making,” she said of the new find.

[01:29.16] “I am very proud. It is a product of Botswana.”

[01:33.96] Lucara said in a statement last week that the company recovered what it called an “exceptional” diamond from Karowe Mine in central Botswana.

[01:46.96] Company miners used X-ray technology that is designed to find large, high-value diamonds.

[01:56.00] “We are ecstatic about the recovery of this extraordinary 2,492-carat diamond,” Lucara President and chief William Lamb said in a statement.

[02:10.86] The weight would make it the largest diamond found in 119 years.

[02:18.04] It also is the second-largest diamond ever mined, after the Cullinan Diamond.

[02:26.01] That 3,106-carat stone was unearthed in South Africa in 1905.

[02:35.03] The Cullinan was the source of several famous cut gems, including some among the British Crown Jewels.

[02:44.60] Botswana, a country of 2.6 million people in southern Africa, is the second-biggest producer of natural diamonds behind Russia.

[02:57.08] The Karowe Mine has produced four other diamonds over 1,000 carats in the last decade.

[03:06.12] Before this discovery, the Sewelo diamond, which was found at the Karowe Mine in 2019, was recognized as the second-biggest mined diamond in the world at 1,758 carats.

[03:24.71] French fashion business Louis Vuitton bought the diamond.

[03:30.28] The sale price was not publicized.

[03:34.01] A British jeweler bought the 1,111-carat Lesedi La Rona diamond, also from Botswana’s Karowe Mine, for $53 million in 2017.

[03:48.61] A Karowe diamond named The Constellation is the holder of the record $63 million sales price.

[03:57.38] Diamonds form when carbon atoms are pushed close together by intense pressure conditions deep underground.

[04:06.15] Scientists say most diamonds are at least a billion years old and some of them more than 3 billion years old.