LARGE 12" Australian Mookaite Polished Display Slab - SIMPLY INCREDIBLE!!

Believe it or not, this gorgeous stone is actually a fossil sediment that formed deep in a Lower Cretaceous marine environment around 120 million years ago! Mookaite is a particularly colorful and highly prized gemstone variation of a type of rock called radiolarite that is largely composed of silica from the skeletons of unimaginable numbers of minute marine organisms known as radiolarians. Each radiolarian is only 0.1–0.25 mm long and they are a major part of the ocean's zooplankton. Their skeletons slowly accumulate on the floor of the ocean at a rate of a few millimeters every thousand years. Gradually the muddy ooze is compacted to form a hard flinty rock which, in the best of cases, takes an incredible polish. And in even fewer cases, the colors and patterns emerge in gem grades of this stone as mineral-rich groundwater soaked through the rock. The swirling color you see today is dominated by red, yellow, white, pink and purple shades and the polish that this particularly hard