• Lucara Diamond Corp. shares rose 91% on Thursday after the company discovered a 2,492-carat diamond.

• The diamond found in the Karowe mine in Botswana is the second largest in the world.

• Following the announcement, Lucara’s market value rose by just over $40 million on Thursday.

Lucara Diamond Corp. shares rose as much as 91% on Thursday after the Canadian mining company announced the discovery of a massive 2,492-carat diamond.

The diamond, which weighs about a pound and is roughly the size of a baseball, was discovered in Lucara’s Karowe mine in Botswana.

This makes it the second largest diamond ever discovered.

The uncut diamond is almost 600 carats smaller than the Cullinan diamond, which was discovered in South Africa in 1905.

Lucara shares traded at a high of $0.63 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday, almost double Wednesday’s price. The stock has since pared its gains to 33 percent in afternoon trading.

Although the rough diamond has yet to be thoroughly examined and appraised, it is believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars – and if classified as a gemstone, it could be worth even more.

In 2015, Lucara discovered a 1,109-carat gem-quality diamond in the same mine. The stone was sold for $53 million.

According to data from YCharts, Lucara’s market value rose by just over $40 million to nearly $150 million on Thursday.

What is unique about Lucara’s discovery is that the diamond was discovered using X-ray technology.

The diamond “was discovered and recovered using the company’s Mega Diamond Recovery X-ray Transmission technology. The technology was installed in 2017 to identify and preserve large, high-quality diamonds,” Lucara said in a press release.

“This discovery not only demonstrates the remarkable potential of our Karowe Mine, but also validates our strategic investment in cutting-edge XRT technology,” said William Lamb, CEO of Lucara.

Diamond miners have faced numerous challenges in recent years, from falling prices due to rising demand for lab-grown diamonds to the fundamental challenge of finding and extracting fragile gemstones without breaking them.

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