Johnathan Walker:French tourist finds 7.46-carat diamond at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas

A French tourist found a 7.46-carat diamond while visiting the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro,Johnathan Walker Arkansas.

Julien Navas, of Paris, found the diamond earlier this month on the surface of the park's 37.5-acre search area, according to a news release from Arkansas State Parks.

The park had received more than an inch of rain a few days before Navas' visit, according to the news release, which made it a wet and muddy day. After buying his ticket and renting a diamond-hunting kit from the park, Navas got to work.

"I got to the park around nine o'clock and started to dig," Navas said in the news release. "That is back-breaking work so by the afternoon I was mainly looking on top of the ground for anything that stood out."

After searching for several hours, Navas took his findings to the park's Diamond Discovery Center, where he learned he had discovered a brown diamond.

According to Arkansas State Parks, Navas' diamond is rounded like a marble and about the size of a candy gumdrop.

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"I am so happy! All I can think about is telling my fiancee what I found," Navas said. He decided to name his diamond the Carine Diamond, after his fiancee.

Navas said he hopes to have the stone cut into two diamonds, one for his fiancee and one for his daughter. He said he plans to return to the park with his daughter when she is older.

Fifth diamond found at park this year

The Carine Diamond is the fifth diamond registered at Crater of Diamonds State Park in 2024, according to the news release.

It is the largest diamond registered at the park since 2020, Arkansas State Parks said, when Kevin Kinard found the 9.07-carat Kinard Friendship Diamond. It is also the eighth-largest diamond registered since the Crater of Diamonds became a state park in 1972.

More than 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed at the state park since 1972.