Rock Identifier

Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Purple-Pink Tourmaline

Purple-Pink Tourmaline

Elbaite tourmaline in purplish-pink to magenta hues, colored by manganese, prized for its vivid orchid-like tones.

gemstone

Calico Obsidian

A mottled, multicolored obsidian blending black, brown, grey, and tan patches like a calico cat's patchwork coat.

igneous
Trapiche Tourmaline

Trapiche Tourmaline

A rare tourmaline showing a fixed wheel-like pattern of color zones and arms radiating from the crystal's center.

gemstone
Orbicular Granite

Orbicular Granite

A rare granitic rock containing concentric, onion-like spheres called orbicules, prized as a striking ornamental stone.

igneous
Bismuthinite

Bismuthinite

A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.

mineral
Plume Agate

Plume Agate

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

gemstone

Flame Obsidian

Black volcanic glass that flashes flame-like bands of iridescent color when light strikes aligned nanoscale inclusions.

igneous

Lace Obsidian

Black volcanic glass laced with delicate web-like veins of contrasting color, formed by flow banding and fine crystallization.

igneous
Hydrogrossular Garnet

Hydrogrossular Garnet

A water-bearing massive grossular garnet, usually green or pink, widely used as a tough jade-like carving stone.

gemstone
Pineapple Opal

Pineapple Opal

A rare opal pseudomorph from White Cliffs, Australia, formed as opal replaced clustered crystals into a pineapple-like shape.

gemstone
Tree Agate

Tree Agate

A white chalcedony filled with green or black dendritic, tree-like mineral inclusions that resemble ferns or moss frozen in stone.

gemstone
Jelly Opal

Jelly Opal

A translucent, gelatinous-looking opal whose transparency gives floating, glowing play-of-color a watery, jelly-like appearance.

gemstone
Porcelanite

Porcelanite

A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock with a dull porcelain-like texture, intermediate between soft diatomite and dense chert.

sedimentary

Jelly Garnet

Jelly Garnet is a translucent grossular garnet whose soft, glassy, gummy-looking body gives it a jelly-like appearance.

gemstone
Cat's Eye Beryl

Cat's Eye Beryl

Beryl displaying chatoyancy, a bright moving band of light, caused by parallel tube-like inclusions when cut as a cabochon.

gemstone
Schorlomite

Schorlomite

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

mineral
Chrome Tourmaline

Chrome Tourmaline

An intensely green tourmaline colored by chromium and vanadium, prized for its vivid emerald-like color from East Africa.

gemstone
Flower Agate

Flower Agate

A creamy pink-and-white chalcedony from Madagascar containing flower-like plume inclusions that resemble blossoms suspended in stone.

gemstone
Desert Rose

Desert Rose

A rosette-shaped cluster of bladed gypsum or barite crystals that traps sand, forming flower-like formations in arid deserts.

mineral
Bauxite

Bauxite

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

sedimentary
Red Agate

Red Agate

A red-toned banded chalcedony colored by iron oxides, ranging from natural carnelian-like reds to heat-treated stones.

gemstone
Cleavelandite

Cleavelandite

A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.

mineral
Fire Agate

Fire Agate

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

gemstone
Belomorite

Belomorite

A regional Russian name for a moonstone-like plagioclase from the White Sea coast, prized for its bluish, slightly iridescent schiller.

gemstone