Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Travertine

A banded, porous limestone deposited by mineral springs, prized as a warm-toned natural building and tile stone.

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.

Iron-stained sandstone whose red color comes from hematite coatings, formed in oxidizing desert, river, and coastal environments.

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

A natural volcanic glass with rich brown and black mahogany-like swirls created by iron oxide inclusions.

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

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

An opaque brown chalcedony whose iron-stained banding mimics deserts, dunes, and distant mountain skylines.

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

An opaque yellow-to-golden variety of jasper, an iron-stained microcrystalline quartz prized for warm color and durable polish.

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.

An orange-to-rust colored variety of natural volcanic glass whose warm tone comes from iron oxide staining within the obsidian.