Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Lizard Skin Jasper

A patterned jasper whose scaly, net-like markings recall reptile skin, popular with lapidaries for its organic camouflage look.

A striking lead chromate mineral prized for its brilliant orange-red prismatic crystals, with the finest specimens from Tasmania.

Obsidian with a hazy, cloud-like translucency caused by uneven distribution of tiny bubbles or incipient crystallites in the glass.

The most common type of mantle peridotite, made of olivine with both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene, representing fertile upper-mantle rock.

A black volcanic glass threaded with delicate grey, swirling lace-like bands of flow lines that show beautifully when polished.

A patterned jasper whose bands and inclusions create miniature landscapes of deserts, mountains, and skies within the stone.

A coarse-grained mafic plutonic rock similar to gabbro but with orthopyroxene as the dominant pyroxene instead of clinopyroxene.

A dense, high-pressure metamorphic rock famous for its red garnets set in bright green pyroxene, formed deep within subduction zones.

Small, smooth, teardrop-shaped beads of basaltic volcanic glass formed from airborne lava droplets, often paired with Pele's hair.

An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.

A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.

A dense, dark ultramafic plutonic rock composed almost entirely of pyroxene minerals, often associated with peridotite and layered intrusions.