Without a doubt, this is some of the most stunning stromatolite I've ever seen., with distincy alternating dark and light banding, with dark purple-ish brown bands, and an occasional deep red blotch. The formation from which it comes in Western Australia dates to the Mesoproterozoic, to a time that the use of sex on earth for reproduction and diversity had just begun, and when the earliest cells with nuclei, the eucaryotes, were first appearing.

The beautiful specimen has been cut across one plane and polished to a mirror finish perpendicular to the growth lines; otherwise the other surfaces are naturalThe specimen is huge, measure roughly a foot across three planar direction, and weighs 10 pounds.