The Lulo Rose is the biggest pink diamond the world has seen in over 300 years—and it could become the most expensive, too
In a discovery that would make Jennifer Lopez drool, miners have unearthed a 170-carat pink diamond in Angola—the biggest to be found anywhere in the world in 300 years.
The sizeable stone has been christened the Lulo Rose by the Lucapa Diamond Company, which recovered the gem from the Lulo mine in Angola. The South African country is the world’s sixth largest diamond producer in the world, but coming across a pink diamond isn’t an everyday occurrence.
Read more: 5 Surprising Facts About Pink Diamonds You Probably Didn’t Know
The Power of Pink
Pink diamonds are prized for their rarity; only one in 10,000 mined diamonds are coloured, according to the Lucapa Diamond Company. And they are even harder to come by in sizes greater than 10 carats, which is what makes the Lulo Rose diamond all the more remarkable.
It has also been classified as a type 2a diamond—the most coveted category of diamonds, with little or no impurities present in the gem’s chemical composition. That’s a defining feature of pink diamonds: while other coloured diamonds get their hue from traces of other elements in their chemical composition (the presence of boron, for example, results in blue diamonds), pink diamonds are chemically pure, and the reason for their dreamy pale pink tint remains a mystery.
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