New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

The first diamond donated to the museum was in 1922. It was a 1.5-carat stone from Brazil. Since then, the collection has grown to over 7,000 stones; of those, 6,500 are natural, ranging in size from 2 to 3 mm. The Paul Seel micromount collection consists of 3,000 mounted micromounts and 3,500 unmounted stones.

The collection also contains 150 diamonds from the kimberlites of northern Colorado and south¬ern Wyoming donated by exploration mining companies. The Geology Department has also used funds donated by Paul Seel to purchase several larger crystals and cut stones from Colorado deposits. The most recent addition was a donation of two, small, natural diamonds from the current northern Canadian explorations.

The extent and variety of these collections will be illustrated. Paul Seel studied the nature of dia¬mond crystals and their growth using his micromounts. The collection contains crystals from all dia¬mond producing areas before 1970. He also made drawings of some of the unique features of diamond growth.