Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Semiblack Opal
Opal with a dark grey body tone sitting between black and light opal, giving play-of-color rich contrast at an accessible price.
gemstoneMexican Lace Agate
A vividly swirling banded agate from northern Mexico with intricate looping patterns in warm reds, golds and creams.
gemstonePolyhedroid Agate
A rare agate that forms naturally with flat polygonal faces and angular geometric shapes rather than the usual rounded nodule.
gemstoneLace Obsidian
Black volcanic glass laced with delicate web-like veins of contrasting color, formed by flow banding and fine crystallization.
igneousScenic Agate
A translucent agate whose mineral inclusions resemble miniature landscapes of trees, hills, and horizons within the stone.
gemstoneChocolate Opal
Precious opal with a warm chocolate-brown body tone that makes its rainbow play-of-color glow, mainly from Ethiopia and Mexico.
gemstoneSilver
A soft, lustrous white native metal with the highest electrical conductivity, used in jewelry, coinage, and industry.
mineralGalena
A heavy, lead-grey metallic mineral with perfect cubic cleavage, galena is the world's main ore of lead and often carries silver.
mineralElestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystalBlack Opal
The rarest and most valuable opal, with a dark body tone that makes its flashing rainbow play-of-color blaze brilliantly.
gemstoneGoethite
Goethite is a common brown iron oxyhydroxide, the main crystalline component of limonite and rust, with shimmering botryoidal forms.
mineralGray Obsidian
Obsidian in gray tones, often semi-translucent, colored by light scattering and minor inclusions within the volcanic glass.
igneousTonalite
A quartz-rich plutonic rock dominated by plagioclase feldspar with little alkali feldspar, closely related to granodiorite and quartz diorite.
igneousSwazi Lace Agate
A swirling, intricately banded lace agate from Eswatini (Swaziland) in soft greys, blues and lavenders with delicate folded patterns.
gemstoneLeopard Obsidian
Black volcanic glass marked with rounded spots and patches that resemble a leopard's coat, caused by spherulitic crystallization.
igneousScenic Jasper
A patterned jasper whose bands and inclusions create miniature landscapes of deserts, mountains, and skies within the stone.
mineralLamprophyre
A dark, mineral-rich dike rock with abundant mica or amphibole phenocrysts set in a fine groundmass, often associated with gold and diamonds.
igneousDragon Vein Agate
A treated chalcedony with a network of crackled veins, usually heated and dyed in vivid colors for affordable, eye-catching beads.
gemstoneNaujaite
A sodalite-rich agpaitic nepheline syenite with poikilitic texture from the Ilimaussaq complex, packed with blue sodalite, eudialyte and arfvedsonite.
igneousPalagonite
A yellow-brown alteration material formed when basaltic volcanic glass reacts with water, common in hydrovolcanic tuffs and pillow lavas.
igneousPeanut Wood Jasper
A fossilized, silicified wood from Australia with white peanut-shaped spots, formed where ancient driftwood was bored by clams and filled with pale sediment.
gemstoneShelly Limestone
A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.
sedimentaryPyroxenite
A dense, dark ultramafic plutonic rock composed almost entirely of pyroxene minerals, often associated with peridotite and layered intrusions.
igneous