Most of it is exposed; some of it disappears under half a metre of accumulated peat. What makes this particular slab so remarkable is what has been carved across its surface, and the scale at which that carving was done. Rock art of the prehistoric period, found widely across Ireland and Atlantic Europe, typically takes the form of cup-and-ring marks: a shallow, ground depression, the cup, surrounded by one or more incised concentric rings. At Maulagallane, these motifs are present in unusual abundance and at an unusual size. One cup-and-four-ring motif has an outermost ring with a maximum diameter of 1.5 metres, the largest single rock art motif on record from the Iveragh Peninsula. The surface as a whole is the largest recorded rock art surface on the peninsula.

The motifs run along almost the entire length of the decorated face, which measures just under ten metres. They were made by picking rather than incising, pressing or striking stone against stone to remove material gradually. The rings are rarely perfectly circular; many tend towards a square plan, an unusual characteristic that sets this site apart from more typical examples. Several of the outer rings carry short external grooves extending downslope from the south-east side of each motif, as if the design reaches outward and downward from each central cup. One cupmark is enclosed by an L-shaped groove rather than concentric rings at all. A curvilinear motif sits close to one of the cup-and-ring groupings. Some motifs that were recorded and drawn by archaeologists Aidan O'Sullivan and John Sheehan in their 1996 survey of the Iveragh Peninsula have since deteriorated; a two-cup-and-three-ring motif that showed four interior cupmarks in their published drawing now shows only two, the others lost to weathering in the intervening decades. Other motifs continue beneath the encroaching peat on the south-east side of the rock, their full extent still unknown.

The site sits on mountain heath at around 49 metres above sea level, on a south-south-east-facing slope with views over a coniferous plantation and the river valley below. The sandstone has natural striations running east to west across its surface, cutting across the carved marks in places, a reminder that the prehistoric carvers were working with a rock that already had its own texture and grain. The motifs are weathered and, in places, genuinely difficult to read; the southernmost end of the surface is flat and relatively featureless, while the most elaborate carving is concentrated toward the north-east end of the decorated face.