Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Mint Tourmaline
A soft, pastel minty-green tourmaline prized for its fresh, light color, a delicate variety of green elbaite.
gemstone
Cat's Eye Tourmaline
Tourmaline displaying chatoyancy, a moving band of light caused by parallel tube-like inclusions, when cut as a cabochon.
gemstone
Rhyolite
A fine-grained, silica-rich volcanic rock that is the extrusive equivalent of granite, often pale, banded, or flow-textured.
igneous
Scheelite
Scheelite is a calcium tungstate ore of tungsten, famous for its brilliant blue-white fluorescence under ultraviolet light.
mineral
Galena
A heavy, lead-grey metallic mineral with perfect cubic cleavage, galena is the world's main ore of lead and often carries silver.
mineral
Schorl
The common iron-rich black variety of tourmaline, by far the most abundant tourmaline species and a popular grounding crystal.
mineral
Chromite
Chromite is the only commercial ore of chromium, a black iron-chromium oxide of the spinel group found in mafic igneous rocks.
mineralDiatomite
A soft, lightweight, chalky sedimentary rock made of the silica shells of microscopic diatoms, prized for its absorbency and filtering ability.
sedimentary
Tourmaline
A boron-rich silicate gemstone group famous for occurring in every color of the rainbow, sometimes several within a single crystal.
gemstone
Rainbow Tourmaline
Tourmaline showing many color zones in a single crystal, often revealing spectacular concentric patterns when sliced.
gemstone
Bastnasite
A rare-earth fluorocarbonate that is one of the world's most important ores of cerium, lanthanum, and other rare earth elements.
mineral
Dravite
The magnesium-rich brown member of the tourmaline group, named for Austria's Drava River and prized for warm earthy tones.
mineralTri-Color Tourmaline
Tourmaline displaying three distinct color zones in a single crystal, a striking natural result of changing growth chemistry.
gemstone
Harzburgite
A depleted mantle peridotite of olivine and orthopyroxene, the refractory residue left after basaltic melt is extracted from the mantle.
igneous
Siderite
Siderite is an iron carbonate ore, a brown rhombohedral mineral of the calcite group found in sediments and veins.
mineral
Tantalite
A dense black iron-manganese tantalate that is the chief ore of tantalum, forming a series with columbite and mined as coltan.
mineral
Peat
A soft, spongy accumulation of partly decayed plant matter that forms in waterlogged bogs and is the first step toward coal.
sedimentary
Sideromelane
A transparent, pale brown basaltic volcanic glass formed when basalt lava is quenched extremely fast, often underwater.
igneous
Gabbro
A coarse-grained, dark mafic intrusive rock that is the plutonic equivalent of basalt, rich in plagioclase and pyroxene.
igneous
Pink Tourmaline
A pink to red gem variety of elbaite tourmaline, colored by manganese, ranging from soft pastel pink to vivid rubellite red.
gemstone
Cat's Eye Green Tourmaline
Green tourmaline cut as a cabochon to show a sharp moving band of light (chatoyancy) caused by fine parallel inclusions.
gemstoneBurgundy Tourmaline
A deep wine-red to maroon tourmaline colored by manganese, a rich darker-toned member of the red-pink rubellite family.
gemstone
Lithic Sandstone
A sandstone in which the dominant grains are fragments of pre-existing rocks rather than single minerals, signaling rapid erosion nearby.
sedimentaryKnorringite
A chromium-rich magnesium garnet of the pyrope series that crystallizes in the deep mantle and is a valuable diamond indicator mineral.
mineral