Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Pyrope Garnet
The magnesium-rich garnet famed for its intense blood-red 'fire,' historically the Bohemian garnet of Victorian jewelry.
gemstone
Chrome Pyrope
A chromium-rich pyrope garnet whose intense blood-red color comes from chromium, often mined from ant hills and kimberlite weathering.
gemstone
Pyromorphite
A lead phosphate secondary mineral known for barrel-shaped green to yellow crystals formed in oxidized lead deposits.
mineral
Dendritic Opal
A common opal with branching, tree-like mineral inclusions that create natural fern, moss, or landscape patterns.
gemstone
Calcite
An extremely common calcium carbonate mineral that comes in nearly every color and shows strong double refraction in clear crystals.
mineral
Jade
A tough, prized ornamental gem that is actually two distinct minerals, jadeite and nephrite, revered for millennia in many cultures.
gemstone
Blue Beryl
The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.
gemstone
Chrysocolla
A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.
mineralDallasite Jasper
A green-and-white volcanic breccia from Vancouver Island, cemented by jasper and rich in epidote, popular as a regional lapidary stone.
gemstone
Green Garnet
An umbrella term for green members of the garnet group, including prized tsavorite, demantoid, and rare chrome-rich uvarovite.
gemstone
Peristerite
A sodium-rich plagioclase moonstone whose fine intergrowth lamellae scatter light into a delicate blue, pigeon-neck sheen.
gemstone
Rutile
Rutile is a major titanium ore and the famous golden needle inclusion that gives rutilated quartz its shimmering threads.
mineralGypcrete
A gypsum-rich duricrust that forms by evaporation in arid soils, cementing sediment into a hard surface layer in deserts.
sedimentary
Tiger Iron
A banded combination rock of golden tiger's eye, red jasper, and metallic hematite, formed in ancient iron deposits.
metamorphic
Liddicoatite
A rare calcium-rich lithium tourmaline famous for the spectacular concentric color zoning seen in polished cross-section slices.
mineral
Orthoclase
A common rock-forming potassium feldspar, the Mohs hardness reference at 6, found in granites and used in ceramics and glassmaking.
mineral
Brecciated Jasper
A jasper made of angular fragments naturally cemented back together, typically showing red and brown pieces in a quartz matrix.
sedimentaryKerimasite
A zirconium-rich garnet related to kimzeyite, formed in carbonatites and skarns, named after the Kerimasi volcano in Tanzania.
mineral
Lujavrite
A dark, layered agpaitic nepheline syenite rich in sodic pyroxene and amphibole with eudialyte, from the Lovozero and Ilimaussaq complexes.
igneousMorimotoite
A black titanium garnet related to andradite and schorlomite, containing tetravalent titanium and ferrous iron, found in skarns and alkaline rocks.
mineralWehrite
An ultramafic rock of olivine and clinopyroxene, a peridotite variety common as cumulate layers in mafic intrusions.
igneous
Chromite
Chromite is the only commercial ore of chromium, a black iron-chromium oxide of the spinel group found in mafic igneous rocks.
mineral
Sanidine
A high-temperature potassium feldspar that forms glassy crystals in fast-cooled volcanic rocks, sometimes cut as a moonstone gem.
mineral
Ilmenite
Ilmenite is the world's leading source of titanium, a heavy iron-black oxide common in mafic rocks and black sands.
mineral