Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Bohemian Garnet

Small, intensely red chrome-pyrope garnets from the Czech Bohemian region, famous for densely set antique Victorian jewelry.

Abundant banded chalcedony from southern Brazil, the world's main source of agate slices and dyed agate products.

A rare agate that forms naturally with flat polygonal faces and angular geometric shapes rather than the usual rounded nodule.

A blue-violet zoisite found only in Tanzania, famous for its vivid trichroic color and rarity.

A fine-grained, low-grade metamorphic rock that splits into flat sheets along slaty cleavage, long used for roofing and flooring.

A deep, rich forest-green elbaite tourmaline (verdelite) colored mainly by iron, with strong pleochroism and excellent durability.

Molybdenite is the primary ore of molybdenum, a soft, greasy, silver-gray sulfide that closely resembles graphite.

A hydrated volcanic glass with pearly, onion-like concentric cracks that pops into lightweight white granules when heated.

A fine-grained sedimentary rock of compacted clay and silt that, unlike shale, breaks in blocks rather than thin layers.