Monster 12.76-carat Pink Diamond Found in Australia
A rare 12.76-carat pink diamond has been discovered at Rio Tinto's Argyle mine in Australia, regarded as the largest pink rough diamond found in the country. Reuters

An Australian mining company, Rio Tinto, said on Wednesday it had discovered a "remarkable" 12.76-carat pink diamond, reportedly the largest ever found.

The diamond, named the Argyle Pink Jubilee, was found at the company's Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia's East Kimberly region.

The process of polishing and cutting the diamond began in Perth on Tuesday and is expected to take about 10 days. It is believed the diamond will be sold later this year, after being shown around the world, a BBC report said. The diamond will be graded after being cut and polished by a team of international experts.

"It has taken 26 years of Argyle production to unearth this stone and we may never see one like this again," Argyle Pink Diamonds Manager, Josephine Johnson, said, according to the BBC.

The Argyle Pink Jubilee, a light pink diamond, is similar in color to the 24-carat Williamson Pink which was discovered in Tanzania in 1947 and which ranks among the finest in existence. Queen Elizabeth II received The Williamson Pink as a wedding gift and the diamond was subsequently set into a brooch for her coronation.

A Rio Tinto spokesman has been quoted in The Telegraph as stating that more than 90 per cent of the pink diamonds in the world come from the Argyle mine but the new gem found was '"unprecedented".

In 2010, a rare 24.78-carat "fancy intense pink" diamond was sold to a well-known British dealer at an auction in Geneva, for a record-breaking price of $46 million (£29m), the highest ever paid for a jewel. That diamond had been in a private collection for 60 years, reports the BBC.

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