An ancient landmass broke-up, giving us pink diamonds

Subject: Schemes

Section: Health

Context:

Scientists said they have found the “missing ingredient” for pink diamonds, some of the world’s most expensive stones due their rarity and beauty, and the discovery could help find more.

Pink diamond:

More than 90% of all the pink (and Red) diamonds ever found were discovered at the recently closed Argyle mine in the remote northwest of Australia.
Generally diamond producing mines are located in the middle of the continent, but Argyle mine is located at the edge of Australia.
By measuring the age of elements in the crystals, the researchers determined that Argyle was 1.3 billion years old. That lines up with the break-up of the world’s first supercontinent, known as Nuna.

Recent study findings:

A team of Australia-based researchers said the pink diamonds were brought to the earth’s surface by the break-up of the first supercontinent around 1.3 billion years ago.
Two of the three ingredients for forming pink diamonds had already been known.
- The first ingredient is carbon, and it must be more than 150 km deep.
- The second is just the right amount of pressure, to damage the otherwise clear diamonds.
- The missing (3rd) ingredient was the event (collisions between western Australia and northern Australia 1.8 billion years ago) that sent the diamonds shooting up to the surface along with the magma.
Old mountain belts of Canada, Russia, southern Africa and Australia are the possible locations where pink diamonds can be found.

Nuna supercontinent:

Columbia, also known as Nuna or Hudsonland, was one of Earth’s ancient supercontinents. It was first proposed by John J.W. Rogers and M. Santosh in 2002 and is thought to have existed approximately 2,500 to 1,500 million years ago, in the Paleoproterozoic Era. The assembly of the supercontinent was likely completed during global-scale collisional events from 2100 to 1800 million years ago.
Columbia consisted of proto-cratons that made up the cores of the continents of Laurentia, Baltica, Ukrainian Shield, Amazonian Shield, Australia, and possibly Siberia, North China, and Kalaharia as well.
The evidence of Columbia’s existence is provided by geological and paleomagnetic data.