Good link, thanks. These gem folks are about four years late on the news.
Not really. Info on this find has been kicking around since the late 80s and samples of the material were showing up on the U.S. market for years before the announcement. I think they were trying to keep a lid on it to prevent large scale commercial exploitation. A Guatemalan company has been selling carvings for a long time. This piece was published in 2002 after the NYT story broke it to the world. Obviously they'd been studying it for considerable time prior.