Man out of Paris, France discovers diamond at Arkansas’s Crater of Diamonds State Park

On Thursday, January 11, a visitor to Arkansas’s Crater of Diamonds State Park discovered a 7.46-carat diamond during his first-ever visit to the park.

Julien Navas, of Paris, France, discovered the 7.46-carat diamond while visiting the U.S. to see the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur Rocket launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After the launch, he traveled to New Orleans with a friend, and along the way, he heard about Arkansas’s world-famous state park in Murfreesboro.

It was a wet and muddy day when Navas arrived in Arkansas and got to work in the park’s search area.

After several hours of searching, Navas brought his finds to the park’s Diamond Discovery Center, where he learned that he had discovered a brown diamond weighing 7.46 carats— he was stunned at the news.

The diamond is deep chocolate brown in color and rounded like a marble. It is about the size of a candy gumdrop.

It’s not uncommon to find diamonds on the surface in the park.

Many visitors choose to name the diamonds they find at Crater of Diamonds State Park, and Navas decided to name his find the Carine Diamond, after his fiancée. He hopes to have the stone cut into two diamonds to give to his fiancée and daughter.

Navas said he plans to return to the park with his daughter when she is older.

The Carine Diamond is the fifth diamond registered at Crater of Diamonds State Park in 2024. It is the largest diamond registered at the park since 2020 and is the eighth-largest diamond registered since the Crater of Diamonds became an Arkansas State Park in 1972.

An average of one to two diamonds are found by park visitors each day. In total, over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed at Crater of Diamonds State Park since the first diamonds were discovered long before it became a state park.