Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Coquina
A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.
sedimentary
Schist
A medium-grade metamorphic rock rich in aligned platy minerals that gives it a shiny, easily splitting, foliated texture.
metamorphic
Sunset Tourmaline
A warm-hued tourmaline blending orange, pink and red tones reminiscent of a sunset sky.
gemstone
Peach Opal
A gentle peach-to-apricot opal, mostly common opal colored by trace iron, prized for its soft warm pastel body.
gemstone
Crystal Opal
Precious opal with a transparent or translucent body, letting play-of-color glow with exceptional depth and clarity.
gemstone
Tangerine Quartz
Clear quartz coated with orange-red hematite, giving points a vivid tangerine color, mainly from Brazil.
crystal
Jet
A lightweight black organic gemstone formed from fossilized wood under pressure, a type of lignite long used in mourning jewelry.
sedimentary
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystal
Spencer Opal
Precious opal from Spencer, Idaho, occurring in thin colorful seams that are typically cut into triplets.
gemstone
Enhydro Quartz
Quartz containing a sealed pocket of ancient water, often with a mobile air bubble that moves when the crystal is tilted.
crystal
Stone Canyon Jasper
A warm-toned brecciated jasper from central California known for swirling browns, golds, and creams broken by darker seams.
gemstone
Carnelian
A warm orange-to-red variety of chalcedony quartz colored by iron oxide, used since antiquity for seals, beads, and cabochons.
gemstone
Matrix Opal
Opal in which precious play-of-color is intimately dispersed through the pores of its host rock rather than forming a solid seam.
gemstone
Ice Opal
A clear, glassy, near-colorless opal resembling ice, sometimes with subtle internal flashes of play-of-color.
gemstone
Jelly Garnet
Jelly Garnet is a translucent grossular garnet whose soft, glassy, gummy-looking body gives it a jelly-like appearance.
gemstone
Selenite
A clear, soft crystalline variety of gypsum that forms glassy or fibrous wands, so soft it can be scratched with a fingernail.
crystal
Kenyte
A rare glassy phonolitic lava with rhomb-shaped anorthoclase phenocrysts and olivine, named for Mount Kenya.
igneous
Apophyllite
A glassy, often colorless silicate that forms pyramid-tipped cubes and is famed for its pearly basal cleavage and watery clarity.
crystal
Pastel Tourmaline
A trade name for lightly saturated elbaite tourmalines in delicate pastel pinks, mints, peaches, and blues popular in modern jewelry.
gemstone
Suevite
A rare breccia formed by meteorite impact, containing shocked rock fragments and glassy melt blobs welded together.
metamorphic
Danburite
A glassy calcium borosilicate forming wedge-tipped prismatic crystals, usually colorless to pale yellow or pink, sometimes faceted as a gem.
crystal
Peat
A soft, spongy accumulation of partly decayed plant matter that forms in waterlogged bogs and is the first step toward coal.
sedimentary
Copper-Bearing Tourmaline
Tourmaline colored by copper, producing the famous vivid neon blues, greens and teals known commercially as Paraiba-type gems.
gemstone
Rock Gypsum
A soft sedimentary evaporite made of massive gypsum, deposited when sulfate-rich seawater or lake water evaporates and concentrates.
sedimentary