Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Thulite

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

A cohesive fault rock formed by brittle crushing and grinding of rock along a fault zone, with angular fragments in a fine matrix.

A jasper made of angular fragments naturally cemented back together, typically showing red and brown pieces in a quartz matrix.

Calcium-carbonate sedimentary rock packed with visible fossils, recording ancient marine life within an easily scratched, fizzing matrix.

A prized blue to blue-green copper-aluminium phosphate, often veined with dark matrix, treasured for jewelry across many cultures.

The classic green ornamental gem, either jadeite or nephrite, valued for millennia for its toughness and rich color, especially imperial green.

The serene blue-to-sea-green variety of beryl, aquamarine is a durable gemstone colored by trace iron and birthstone for March.

The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.

A colorless, transparent variety of topaz valued as an affordable, hard, brilliant alternative to diamond in jewelry.

The deepest, most saturated blue grade of treated topaz, prized for its rich steely-blue color and durability in jewelry.

A glassy, often colorless silicate that forms pyramid-tipped cubes and is famed for its pearly basal cleavage and watery clarity.

A rare iron-rich (ferric) species of the tourmaline group, dark brown to bronze-black, named after crystallographer Martin Buerger.