Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Quartzite
An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.
metamorphic
Skarn
A calc-silicate rock formed by chemical exchange between magma and carbonate rock, often rich in garnet and economically important ore minerals.
metamorphicPeanut 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.
gemstone
Plagioclase
The most abundant rock-forming feldspar group, a continuous solid-solution series from sodium albite to calcium anorthite that builds much of the crust.
mineral
Adularia
A low-temperature potassium feldspar famous for forming transparent Alpine crystals and the gem moonstone, which shows a floating blue sheen called adularescence.
mineral
Eclogite
A dense, high-pressure metamorphic rock famous for its red garnets set in bright green pyroxene, formed deep within subduction zones.
metamorphic
Jaspillite
A banded, metamorphosed iron formation in which bright red jasper alternates with silvery hematite or magnetite layers.
metamorphic
Itabirite
A metamorphosed banded iron formation of alternating quartz and iron-oxide layers, mined as a major iron ore.
metamorphic