'Big Ugly Diamond' discovered by Arkansas state park visitor

A diamond discovered at an Arkansas state park has been dubbed "Bud" by the man who discovered it.

"That's for 'Big, Ugly Diamond,'" said David Anderson, a lucky tourist from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Anderson found the 3.29-carat brown diamond on 4 March at Crater of Diamonds State Park.

One or two diamonds are found every day at the park, which permits visitors to keep the diamonds they find.

The gem was found on a Saturday trip to the park's 37.5-acre diamond searching zone, park officials said in a news release on Wednesday.

"At first I thought it was quartz but wondered why it was so shiny," Mr Anderson said.

"Once I picked it up, I realised it was a diamond!"

Mr Anderson said he has been travelling to the park since first hearing about it on TV in 2007.

"After I found my first diamond, a 1.5-carat white, I was hooked," he said, adding that he has found more than 400 diamonds since then.

Other top finds he has made include a 3.83-carat yellow diamond found in 2011 and a 6.19-carat white diamond found in 2014.

Like the others, Mr Anderson says he plans to sell his recent discovery to jewellers in his area.

Park Interpreter Tayler Markham described the rare stone as "about the size of an English pea, with a light brown color and octahedron shape".

The smooth, rounded edges on Anderson's recent find are typical, given the "resorption" during the eruption that first brought the park's diamonds to the surface.

The diamond is the largest found in the park since September 2021, when a visitor from Granite Bay, California, found a 4.38-carat yellow diamond.

So far this year, 124 diamonds have been found at the Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Visitors can rent digging and sifting tools, and park rangers officer free identification for any rocks and minerals found in the park.

More than 75,000 diamonds have been found since 1906. Of those, more than 35,000 were discovered since the region became a state park in 1972.

The site is also where the largest diamond ever found in the US was discovered.

In 1924, a white diamond with a pink cast weighing 40.23 carats was unearthed from the site.

Dubbed the "Uncle Sam", it is now on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.