The Only Place on Earth You Can Find This Rock

Hidden in the remote Kennedy Range region of Western Australia lies one of Earth’s rarest gemstone materials: Mookaite. This striking, multicoloured silicified radiolarite formed on the floor of an ancient Cretaceous sea and occurs only in a tiny area near Mooka Creek. In this article, we explore how microscopic marine fossils were transformed into one of Australia’s most distinctive gemstones, why it formed in only one locality, and what makes Mookaite a geological outlier unlike anything found anywhere else on the planet.