E-Mail IMAGE: A diamond encapsulating tiny bits of fluid from the deep earth, held here by fine tweezers, was part of a study delving into the age and origins of South African... view more Credit: Yaakov Weiss Diamonds are sometimes described as messengers from the deep earth; scientists study them closely for insights into the otherwise inaccessible depths from which they come. But the messages are often hard to read. Now, a team has come up with a way to solve two longstanding puzzles: the ages of individual fluid-bearing diamonds, and the chemistry of their parent material. The research has allowed them to sketch out geologic events going back more than a billion years--a potential breakthrough not only in the study of diamonds, but of planetary evolution.