Did diamonds begin on the ancient ocean floor?

Geology professor Dan Schulze calls this singular gem from the remote Guaniamo region of Venezuela the "Picasso" diamond. The blue luminescent, high-resolution image of a diamond formed over a billion years ago reminds him of some paintings from Picasso's Blue Period. Like a cubist masterpiece, its striking irregular and anomalous features carry timeless secrets and yield new perspectives on life and the Earth's early history. "A diamond is a time capsule. Anomalies in the chemical signature are the key to understanding the unusual conditions under which some diamonds were formed," says Schulze, an earth sciences professor in the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Led by Schulze, an international team of scientists from Australia, Scotland, the United States and Venezuela discovered persuasive new evidence to support the idea that some diamonds, like Picasso, were formed from bacteria or algae on the ancient ocean floor. Their findings suggest these diamonds, known as eclogitic diamonds, originated as organic matter on the ancient sea floor, which was thrust down into the Earth's mantle by a geological process known as subduction.