Mining Firms Discover Rare Purple Diamonds In Quebec

Montreal, Canada (AHN)- A joint venture mining project has discovered nine rare purple diamonds from a batch of 649 diamonds harvested at the Ekomiak V property in James Bay, Quebec.

"Natural fancy colored diamonds are very rare and expensive. Purple is one of the rarest and most desirable colors. This makes the Quebec diamond discovery both unique and amongst the oldest diamond bearing occurrence in the world," says Dianor Resources, Inc., one of the JV partners, in a statement.

The largest diamond was a colorless fragment measuring 1.06mm by 0.98 mm by 0.56 mm. All of the purple diamond samples have been associated with samples having high diamond counts, 39 to 224 diamonds per sample.

The diamonds were recovered from 18 surface rock samples of conglomerates between 2.7 and 2.7 billion years old.

The joint venture, composed of Dianor, Metalex Ventures Ltd., and Wemindiji Exploration Inc., mapped out eight different geographic areas of Quebec in late 2006 until last month.

The companies said the new diamond discovery is the largest to date in Quebec as the diamond-bearing Ekomiak Conglomerate extends for four kilometers and up to 500 meters in width with individual outcrops measuring 500 meters by 400 meters in size.