Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so they say. By my eye, this stromatolite, more than three times the age of the oldest trilobite, is as pretty as stromatolite gets. To me it resembles Brazilian rosewood in its various reddish-brown hues. The formation from which it comes in Western Australia dates to the Paleoproterozoic, to a time that preceded the use of sex on earth for reproduction and diversity. This stromatolite exhibits fine banding detail, though the inter-band layers are similarly colored.

The beautiful specimen has been polished to a mirror finish perpendicular to the growth lines. An awesome stromatolite specimen. Such large specimens are both hard to come by, and difficult to polish.