Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Pelitic Schist

A schist derived from clay-rich sediments, rich in mica and often bearing index minerals like garnet, staurolite, or kyanite.

A warm cognac-brown to reddish-brown tourmaline, typically magnesium-rich dravite, prized for its rich whisky-like color.

A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.

A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.

A rare brown chalcedony containing thin iron-oxide layers that produce flashing, fiery rainbow iridescence like trapped flames.

A dark, foliated schist rich in needle-like hornblende crystals, formed by metamorphism of mafic igneous rocks.

A general term for light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks rich in quartz and feldspar, like rhyolite.

A lustrous black titanium-rich garnet of the andradite series, found in alkaline igneous rocks like nepheline syenite and ijolite.

An earthy aluminum-rich residual rock and the world's principal ore of aluminum, often showing distinctive pea-like pisolites.

Arizona Ruby is a chromium-rich pyrope garnet from Arizona, often gathered from anthills, valued for its intense ruby-like red.

A rare mushroom-shaped tourmaline growth habit, typically magnesium-rich dravite/uvite, prized by collectors for its fungus-like cap-and-stem form.