Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Clear Beryl

Transparent, colorless beryl (goshenite), the pure form of the species valued for its clarity, hardness, and well-formed crystals.

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

A trade name for lightly saturated elbaite tourmalines in delicate pastel pinks, mints, peaches, and blues popular in modern jewelry.

Tourmaline colored by copper, producing the famous vivid neon blues, greens and teals known commercially as Paraiba-type gems.

A colorful trade-name material, often dyed and reconstituted, sold as jasper; vivid blues and greens are typically artificially enhanced.

The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.

The hardest known natural material, a crystalline form of pure carbon prized as the ultimate gemstone for its brilliance and fire.

An unusually pure, transparent-to-translucent obsidian with few inclusions; truly water-clear specimens are rare in nature.

A pure, translucent white marble from the Greek island of Paros, the preferred stone of ancient sculptors for its waxy glow.

An old varietal name for alkali- and cesium-rich beryl, typically colorless to pale pink, overlapping with vorobyevite and morganite.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.