Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Thulite

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.

Obsidian with a hazy, cloud-like translucency caused by uneven distribution of tiny bubbles or incipient crystallites in the glass.

Black volcanic glass crossed by a fine network of grey or brown veins that resemble a spider's web.

A rose-pink manganese silicate marbled with black veins, prized as a tough ornamental and occasionally faceted gemstone.

Wolframite is the historic principal ore of tungsten, a heavy black tungstate forming bladed crystals in granite veins.

A white, porous borate mineral webbed with gray-black veins, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

Black volcanic glass laced with delicate web-like veins of contrasting color, formed by flow banding and fine crystallization.

A rounded sedimentary nodule cracked internally and filled with veins of yellow calcite, prized for its striking dragon-skin patterning.

A dark, glassy rock formed when frictional heat from fault movement or impact melts rock along narrow veins.