Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Verdelite

The classic green gem variety of elbaite tourmaline, ranging from bright grass-green to deep forest tones colored by iron or chromium.

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

Yellow to golden volcanic glass; natural examples owe their color to iron, though much bright yellow obsidian on the market is manufactured glass.

A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.

A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.

A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.

Boulder opal from the Koroit field in Queensland, famous for intricate ironstone matrix patterns laced with colorful precious opal.

Precious opal that forms in thin veins within brown ironstone boulders, cut with the host rock left as a natural dark backing.

Boulder opal from the Quilpie district of Queensland, Australia, with bright color set in dark ironstone matrix.

The highest-rank coal, a hard, lustrous black rock that burns cleanly with little smoke and high heat output.