1 of 3 | Raynae Madison and her family traveled from their Oklahoma home to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, where they discovered a 2.79-carat brown diamond. Photo courtesy of Arkansas State Parks
Sept. 25 (UPI) -- An Oklahoma family celebrating a birthday at Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park discovered a brown diamond weighing in at 2.79 carats.
Raynae Madison said she and her family traveled to the park from Cookson, Okla., for her nephew's birthday and brought along a beach digging kit and sand sifting tools they bought from a dollar store.
The family went sifting near Prospector Trailhead, on the north side of the park, and after going through a few buckets worth of sand, spotted a shiny, oblong object.
"At first I thought it looked really neat, but I wasn't sure what it was," Madison said in an Arkansas State Parks news release. "I honestly thought it was too big to be a diamond."
