A diamond field containing trillions of carats has been discovered hidden under a giant meteorite crater in Siberia, Russian scientists have disclosed.
Specialists say the diamonds, which are "twice as hard as normal," could be used for industrial purpose but not for jewellery.
The stones were created by the impact of a bolide - a large projectile - smashing into the Earth 35 million years ago, leaving the 100kilometre wide Popigay crater under which they are buried. "The resources of super-hard diamonds contained in rocks of the Popigay crypto-explosion structure are 10 times bigger than the world's entire known reserves," said Nikolai Pokhilenko, the head of the Geological and Mineralogical Institute in Novosibirsk. "We are talking about trillions of carats. By comparison, the known reserves in Yakutia today are estimated at one billion carats."
Yakutia is a vast region of eastern Siberia stretching to the Arctic Ocean.
