Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Sapphire
The gem variety of corundum in every color except red, most prized in velvety blue and exceptionally hard and durable.
gemstone
Rose Tourmaline
A soft to medium pink elbaite tourmaline in rose hues, colored by manganese and prized for romantic jewelry.
gemstone
Oolitic Limestone
Limestone built from tiny rounded ooid grains resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Paintbrush Agate
A plume agate whose inclusions form upright, bristly clusters resembling the strokes of a paintbrush.
gemstone
Exotica Jasper
Also called Sci-Fi Jasper, a Mexican jasper-rhyolite with swirling abstract patterns in cream, tan, gray, pink, and green.
gemstone
Common Opal
Opal without play-of-color, valued for solid body hues; also called potch, it occurs in a wide range of colors worldwide.
gemstone
Cloud Agate
A chalcedony agate with soft, billowing cloud-like masses of gray and white suspended in a translucent body.
gemstone
Cat's Eye Opal
An opal cut to show chatoyancy, a sharp moving band of light like a cat's eye, usually in honey, green or yellow common opal.
gemstone
Bone Opal
Fossil bone in which opal has replaced the original tissue, sometimes showing play-of-color, a rare collector fossil.
gemstone
Azurite
A deep blue copper carbonate mineral that forms in oxidized copper deposits, often alongside green malachite.
mineral
Alnöite
A rare dark ultramafic lamprophyre rich in melilite, biotite and olivine, named for Alnö Island in Sweden.
igneous
Spirit Quartz
A South African quartz whose central crystal is coated in tiny druzy points, also called cactus or fairy quartz.
crystal
Spessartite Garnet
A manganese aluminum garnet glowing in vivid orange to reddish-orange tones, with the finest called mandarin garnet.
gemstone
Spencer Opal
Precious opal from Spencer, Idaho, occurring in thin colorful seams that are typically cut into triplets.
gemstone
Shale
The most common sedimentary rock, a fissile mudrock of compacted clay and silt that splits into thin layers.
sedimentary
Oolite
A limestone made of tiny spherical ooids, resembling fish roe, formed in warm, agitated shallow seas.
sedimentary
Outback Jasper
An earthy Australian-style jasper in red, ochre, and yellow tones evoking the colors of the Outback desert.
mineral
Nevada Opal
Opal mined in Nevada, famous for fiery black precious opal and opalized wood from the Virgin Valley district.
gemstone
Morado Opal
Mexican purple common opal, "morado" meaning purple in Spanish, valued for its violet color and reputed UV color-shift.
gemstone
Mica Schist
A glittery, strongly foliated rock made mostly of aligned mica flakes that split into thin, shiny sheets.
metamorphic
Ice Opal
A clear, glassy, near-colorless opal resembling ice, sometimes with subtle internal flashes of play-of-color.
gemstone
Felsite
A general term for light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks rich in quartz and feldspar, like rhyolite.
igneous
Chrome Diopside
A vivid green chromium-bearing diopside, an affordable emerald-like gem mined largely in Siberia.
gemstone
Chromite
Chromite is the only commercial ore of chromium, a black iron-chromium oxide of the spinel group found in mafic igneous rocks.
mineral