Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Fluorite
A soft, colorful calcium fluoride mineral famous for cubic crystals, perfect octahedral cleavage, and fluorescence under UV light.
mineral
Fire Obsidian
A rare obsidian showing brilliant fiery iridescence caused by thin nanolayers of magnetite crystals diffracting light within the glass.
crystal
Crocoite
A striking lead chromate mineral prized for its brilliant orange-red prismatic crystals, with the finest specimens from Tasmania.
mineral
Chalcocite
A dark gray copper sulfide that is one of the richest copper ores, prized by collectors when found as rare sharp crystals.
mineral
Black Tourmaline
The opaque black iron-rich variety of tourmaline (schorl), forming striated prismatic crystals popular as a protective grounding stone.
mineral
Sylvanite
A silver-white gold-silver telluride and important gold-silver ore, noted for crystals arranged in writing-like graphic patterns.
mineral
Cuprite
Cuprite is a deep red copper oxide and an important secondary copper ore, prized for its rare ruby-red gem crystals.
mineral
Blue Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass colored deep blue with cobalt and studded with tiny copper crystals that mimic a starry night sky.
gemstone
Bixbyite
A black metallic manganese iron oxide famous for sharp cubic crystals, classically found with red beryl and topaz in Utah rhyolite.
mineral
Cleavelandite
A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.
mineral
Uvarovite Garnet
The rare calcium-chromium garnet, famous for its sparkling emerald-green druzy crusts of tiny crystals, the only consistently green garnet.
mineral
Agate
A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.
mineral
Wehrite
An ultramafic rock of olivine and clinopyroxene, a peridotite variety common as cumulate layers in mafic intrusions.
igneous
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstone
Rutile
Rutile is a major titanium ore and the famous golden needle inclusion that gives rutilated quartz its shimmering threads.
mineral
Chlorite Schist
A soft, green, foliated rock rich in chlorite, formed by low-grade metamorphism of mafic or volcanic rocks.
metamorphic
Adularia
A low-temperature potassium feldspar famous for forming transparent Alpine crystals and the gem moonstone, which shows a floating blue sheen called adularescence.
mineral
Brecciated Jasper
A jasper made of angular fragments naturally cemented back together, typically showing red and brown pieces in a quartz matrix.
sedimentary
Talc Schist
An extremely soft, soapy-feeling foliated rock made largely of talc, formed by metamorphism of magnesium-rich rocks.
metamorphic
Diatomaceous Earth
Soft, lightweight siliceous rock made of fossilized diatom shells, valued as a filter, abrasive, and absorbent.
sedimentary
Chrysocolla
A vivid blue-green hydrated copper silicate, soft on its own but prized as a gem when hardened by intergrown quartz or chalcedony.
mineral
Marl
A soft, earthy sedimentary rock made of a mixture of calcium carbonate and clay, intermediate between limestone and mudstone.
sedimentary
Vogesite
A dark hornblende-rich lamprophyre dike rock with amphibole and augite phenocrysts in an alkali-feldspar-dominated groundmass.
igneous
Novaculite
An extremely fine-grained, dense siliceous rock famous as Arkansas whetstone, prized for sharpening fine cutting tools.
sedimentary