Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Blue Calcite

A soft, soothing powder-blue variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral often sold as gentle tumbled stones.

A soft mint-to-apple-green variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral popular as soothing tumbled stones.

A famous white to blue-grey Italian marble from Carrara, prized for centuries by sculptors and architects for its purity and fine grain.

A rounded sedimentary nodule cracked internally and filled with veins of yellow calcite, prized for its striking dragon-skin patterning.

A marbled, abstractly patterned stone resembling modern art, technically a metamorphosed limestone rather than a true silica jasper.

A fractured fine-grained limestone whose iron-stained crack networks form natural scenes resembling ruined cities and landscapes.

A magnesium carbonate mineral, usually chalky white with grey veining, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

A soft, lightweight, chalky sedimentary rock made of the silica shells of microscopic diatoms, prized for its absorbency and filtering ability.

A fossiliferous jasper packed with spiral snail shells, technically a silicified gastropod limestone from Wyoming.

A metamorphic rock of calcium-rich silicate minerals formed from impure limestone or dolomite altered by heat and fluids.

A calcium-magnesium tourmaline that forms in metamorphosed limestones, typically dark green to brown and often in well-formed crystals.

The softest mineral on the Mohs scale, talc has a greasy, soapy feel and is the source of talcum powder and soapstone.