Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Mica

A family of sheet silicate minerals that split into thin, flexible, shiny sheets, giving rocks a sparkling, layered appearance.

A rare zirconium-bearing garnet that crystallizes in carbonatites and alkaline rocks, first described from Magnet Cove, Arkansas.

A rare strontium-dominant feldspar, the strontium analogue of paracelsian, found in metamorphosed strontium-rich and manganese-bearing rocks.

A mica schist containing bladed blue kyanite crystals, a marker of medium- to high-grade metamorphism of aluminous rocks.

Ilmenite is the world's leading source of titanium, a heavy iron-black oxide common in mafic rocks and black sands.

A green, vanadium-dominant garnet that forms in vanadium-rich metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, notably in uranium-vanadium districts.

A hard zinc-rich member of the spinel group, usually dark blue-green to black, forming octahedral crystals in metamorphic and pegmatitic rocks.

A chromium-dominant tourmaline related to dravite, producing intensely deep green to blackish-green crystals from chromium-rich metamorphic rocks.

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

The calcium end-member of the plagioclase feldspar series, a high-temperature mineral common in mafic rocks, meteorites and lunar samples.

A soft, dark, organic-rich mud deposited in stagnant, oxygen-poor water, a key precursor to oil and gas source rocks.