Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Mintabie Opal

Precious opal from the Mintabie field in South Australia, known for hard, bright crystal opal and some dark-bodied stones.

A golden-toned opal ranging from translucent common opal to precious stones flashing color against a warm yellow body.

A glowing orange-to-red opal whose warm body color resembles flame; some stones add flashes of play-of-color.

A tourmaline displaying two or more distinct colors in a single crystal, prized for natural color zoning like watermelon and bicolor stones.

Australia's classic light-bodied precious opal from Coober Pedy, famed for milky white stones flashing pastel rainbow play-of-color.

A translucent agate containing delicate three-dimensional feather- or plant-like plumes of mineral inclusions suspended in chalcedony.

A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.

Basalt that has been metamorphosed, developing new minerals like chlorite, actinolite, and epidote that give it a greenish color.

Fossilized wood in which the original organic structure has been replaced by opal, sometimes showing precious play-of-color.

Coarse-grained gabbro that has been metamorphosed, partly recrystallizing into amphibole, plagioclase, and other metamorphic minerals.

Fossil shells whose original material has been replaced by opal, preserving ancient marine forms in common or precious opal.

Rhyolite that has been metamorphosed, recrystallizing its silica-rich volcanic material into a tougher felsic metamorphic rock.

Fossil bone in which opal has replaced the original tissue, sometimes showing play-of-color, a rare collector fossil.

Fossil material whose original substance has been replaced by opal, preserving ancient shapes in common or play-of-color opal.