That's the way any crystal grows ... display at Smithsonian's Natural History Museum? The Hope diamond is at least a billion years old. You don't see the original rock that carried the diamonds ...

The defining feature of this diamond is its hexagonal crystal lattice, distinct from the usual cubic structure seen in ...

who helped advance the study of natural diamond crystals. Microscopic diamonds appear to have formed in the fiery instant when the meteor that created Arizona's Canyon Diablo struck the Earth.