Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Agate

A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.

A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.

Rutile is a major titanium ore and the famous golden needle inclusion that gives rutilated quartz its shimmering threads.

A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.

A yellow-brown alteration material formed when basaltic volcanic glass reacts with water, common in hydrovolcanic tuffs and pillow lavas.

A cohesive fault rock formed by brittle crushing and grinding of rock along a fault zone, with angular fragments in a fine matrix.

A magnesium carbonate mineral, usually chalky white with grey veining, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

A royal-blue feldspathoid mineral with white calcite veining, often confused with lapis lazuli but lacking its golden pyrite flecks.

A prized blue to blue-green copper-aluminium phosphate, often veined with dark matrix, treasured for jewelry across many cultures.

A coarse-grained limestone built of gravel-sized carbonate clasts, the carbonate equivalent of a conglomerate or breccia.