Figure 1. Left: The Blue Moon diamond as the 29.62 ct rough discovered in January 2014 at the Cullinan mine in South Africa. Right: The faceted Blue Moon diamond, a 12.03 ct cushion modified brilliant ...

A peridot-like bright greenish yellow to green gem material called “green amber” has recently appeared in the gem market.

Figure 1. The color zoning of amethyst from Boudi often displays a characteristic hourglass shape. Photo by Abdelghani El Harfi and Salahaddine Mouaddib. For 25 years, the Moroccan locality of Boudi ...

A new opal deposit was discovered in 2008 near the village of Wegel Tena, in volcanic rocks of Ethiopia’s Wollo Province. Unlike previous Ethiopian opals, the new material is mostly white, with some ...

Figure 1. Sapphires from Madagascar: a beautiful 3.29 ct untreated faceted stone and an assortment of rough in the background. Madagascar has produced many high-quality stones in the last few years ...

Diamonds are known for their hardness – their ability to resist scratches and abrasions. But diamonds are not impervious to damage, since their hardness is uneven along different crystal directions.

The Karowe Diamond Mine in Botswana, owned and operated by Lucara Diamond Corp., has gained international recognition for producing large, high-quality type IaB or coexistence of IaB with IIa diamonds ...

North America has a long history of natural pearling owing in part to its very diverse and rich freshwater mussel resources. After the Civil War pearl jewelry gained greater popularity in the United ...

Diamonds are the most amazing of gems. Just as amazing, however, is how natural diamonds reach Earth’s surface. Diamonds are formed 150 to 700 km deep in Earth, and are then carried upward in a rare ...

Gem-quality synthetic or laboratory-grown diamonds are more available in today’s jewelry marketplace than ever before, causing both interest and concern about lab-grown diamonds and whether ...

Carbon is one of the most important elements on our planet, which led the Geological Society of London to name 2019 the Year of Carbon. Diamonds are a main host for carbon in the deep earth and also ...

Raman spectroscopy confirmed the identity of the material as pezzottaite by an intense peak at ~1100 cm –1, which is not present in beryl. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy showed features ...