Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Staurolite-mica Schist
A mica schist studded with red-brown staurolite porphyroblasts, including the famous cross-shaped twins called fairy stones.
metamorphic
Chrome Pyrope
A chromium-rich pyrope garnet whose intense blood-red color comes from chromium, often mined from ant hills and kimberlite weathering.
gemstone
Lindi Garnet
Lindi Garnet is a rare vanadium-rich color-change garnet from Tanzania's Lindi region, shifting from blue-green daylight tones to purple-red.
gemstone
Purple Tourmaline
An uncommon purple to violet tourmaline colored by manganese, the deeper reddish-purple stones sometimes called siberite.
gemstone
Mexican Lace Agate
A vividly swirling banded agate from northern Mexico with intricate looping patterns in warm reds, golds and creams.
gemstone
Mookaite Jasper
An Australian silicified radiolarite jasper in warm mustard, red, burgundy, and cream earth tones, found only in Western Australia.
sedimentary
Green Garnet
An umbrella term for green members of the garnet group, including prized tsavorite, demantoid, and rare chrome-rich uvarovite.
gemstone
Bixbyite
A black metallic manganese iron oxide famous for sharp cubic crystals, classically found with red beryl and topaz in Utah rhyolite.
mineral
Povondraite
A rare ferric-iron-dominant tourmaline that forms in oxidized evaporite settings, appearing as black to red-brown prismatic crystals.
mineral
Lake Michigan Agate
Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.
gemstoneJet
A lightweight black organic gemstone formed from fossilized wood under pressure, a type of lignite long used in mourning jewelry.
sedimentary
Color Change Garnet
A rare garnet that dramatically shifts color from greenish in daylight to reddish under lamplight, rivaling alexandrite.
gemstone
Adirondack Garnet
Adirondack Garnet is large, dark-red almandine from New York's Gore Mountain, the world's most famous industrial garnet abrasive source.
mineral
Eclogite
A dense, high-pressure metamorphic rock famous for its red garnets set in bright green pyroxene, formed deep within subduction zones.
metamorphic
Agate
A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.
mineral
Andalusite
A pleochroic aluminum silicate that flashes green and reddish-brown from different angles, with a cross-marked variety called chiastolite.
mineralBekily Garnet
A rare color-change garnet from Bekily, Madagascar, shifting from bluish-green in daylight to purplish-red under warm light, including the famed blue garnets.
gemstoneMaligano Jasper
A rare Indonesian jasper from Sulawesi known for ghostly tube structures, brecciated patterns, and contrasting grey, red, and purple zones.
mineral
Alexandrite
A rare color-change chrysoberyl that appears green in daylight and red under incandescent light, sometimes called emerald by day, ruby by night.
gemstone
Bumblebee Jasper
A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.
sedimentary
Oil Shale
A fine-grained sedimentary rock rich in solid organic matter (kerogen) that yields oil and gas when heated.
sedimentary
Peat
A soft, spongy accumulation of partly decayed plant matter that forms in waterlogged bogs and is the first step toward coal.
sedimentary
Kakortokite
A spectacularly banded agpaitic nepheline syenite of alternating red eudialyte, black amphibole and white feldspar layers from Ilimaussaq, Greenland.
igneous
Chrome Tourmaline
An intensely green tourmaline colored by chromium and vanadium, prized for its vivid emerald-like color from East Africa.
gemstone