Buenas, Frank_K! --Just as a refresher for all- if you find one kimberlite body you'll likely find more, since 'pipes' typically occur in clusters. The initial big step is finding the first one...
Here's some such info:
southernera.com
After Formation
- Diamonds are transported to the surface by a volcanic (igneous) magnesium rich rock known a kimberlite (named after the South African city where it was first found and described).
- Until the famous kimberlite pipe discovered in South Africa in 1871, the host rock for diamonds was not known.
- Kimberlite is a host rock, not a source rock (theory proven through carbon dating technology at ROM in 1984 by Dr. Crow).
- Sometimes kimberlite is called the elevator rock. It occurs in pipes. Thought to occur during volcanic activity at the time of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic period.
- Visualize a shotgun blase from the centre of the earth and the stovepipe-like structure it would create -- that's what kimberlite pipes usually look like. They occur in clusters of 3-50 or more. The largest pipe is usually the most productive. . .
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Also, for more related info regarding kimberlites & diamonds:
amnh.org
Diamonds ascend to Earth's surface in rare molten rock, or magma, that originates at great depths. Carrying diamonds and other samples from Earth's mantle, this magma rises and erupts in small but violent volcanoes. Just beneath such volcanoes is a carrot-shaped "pipe" filled with volcanic rock, mantle fragments, and some embedded diamonds....
And,
amnh.org
The complex volcanic magmas that solidify into kimberlite and lamproite are not the source of diamonds, only the elevators that bring them with other minerals and mantle rocks to Earth's surface. Although rising from much greater depths than other magmas, these pipes and volcanic cones are relatively small and rare, but they erupt in extraordinary supersonic explosions...
And,
amnh.org
Kimberlites are generally much younger than the diamonds they bring to Earth's surface. Kimberlites and lamproites have been dated between 50 and 1,600 million years old. Diamonds associated with harzburgites are about 3.3 billion years old -- more than two thirds the age of Earth itself, and those from eclogites generally range from 3 billion to less than 1 billion years old. These age differences help clarify a picture of diamonds having crystallized and been stored beneath the ancient continental cratons and only later being lifted to Earth's surface by kimberlites...
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-lots more at respective hotlinks, -graphics included!
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Best O luck,
-j
:>
....
Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) website:
ags.gov.ab.ca
The Mystique of Diamonds:
rfmoeller.com
and,
southernera.com |
