Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Zebra Jasper

A black-and-white striped chalcedony-quartz rock whose bold zebra-like banding makes it a popular ornamental and lapidary stone.

A finely banded agate from Botswana known for delicate parallel layers of grey, pink, and white.

A hydrated volcanic glass with pearly, onion-like concentric cracks that pops into lightweight white granules when heated.

A soft, fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum (or banded calcite) long prized as a carving and ornamental stone.

A banded chalcedony combining reddish-brown sard with white or black onyx layers, prized since antiquity for carved cameos.

A fractured and re-cemented agate whose angular broken bands resemble crumbling walls and ruined cityscapes when polished.

A spectacularly banded agpaitic nepheline syenite of alternating red eudialyte, black amphibole and white feldspar layers from Ilimaussaq, Greenland.

A white, porous borate mineral webbed with gray-black veins, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.

A white chalcedony filled with green or black dendritic, tree-like mineral inclusions that resemble ferns or moss frozen in stone.

Rhodochrosite is a rose-pink manganese carbonate prized for raspberry-red crystals and banded pink-and-white gem material.