Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Mariposite

A green, gold-associated metamorphic rock made of chrome-rich mica and quartz, named for Mariposa County in California's gold country.

A rare boron-bearing feldspar, the boron analogue of albite, first found in oil-shale nodules of the Green River Formation.

The magnesium-rich brown member of the tourmaline group, named for Austria's Drava River and prized for warm earthy tones.

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

A coarse sedimentary rock of rounded pebbles and gravel cemented in a finer matrix, recording ancient rivers and beaches.

A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.

A silver-white cobalt arsenic sulfide that is a leading ore of cobalt, forming bright metallic cubic and pyritohedral crystals.

A soft pink to crimson hydrated cobalt arsenate, famous as cobalt bloom that signals nearby cobalt ores.

A vivid green hydrous nickel-magnesium silicate that is a major ore of nickel, mined from weathered ultramafic rocks.

A metallic cobalt-nickel arsenide, an important cobalt ore, named for the Skutterud mines of Norway.

A durable magnesium aluminum oxide gem that occurs in many colors and was long mistaken for ruby.

A combustible black sedimentary rock formed from ancient plant matter and burned for centuries as a primary fossil fuel.

Obsidian with a vivid blue sheen or hue; natural blue obsidian is rare, and intensely uniform blue material is usually manufactured glass.

A man-made glittering glass colored deep blue with cobalt and studded with tiny copper crystals that mimic a starry night sky.