Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Peacock Ore

A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.

Rare precious opal from Tintenbar in northern New South Wales, Australia, occurring in volcanic basalt rather than sedimentary rock.

A dark, dense metamorphic rock dominated by hornblende and plagioclase, formed by medium- to high-grade metamorphism of basalt.

A depleted mantle peridotite of olivine and orthopyroxene, the refractory residue left after basaltic melt is extracted from the mantle.

The fine-grained volcanic equivalent of monzonite, an intermediate lava with nearly equal feldspars and little free quartz.

A glassy, jet-black volcanic rock formed when lava cools too fast to crystallize, prized for razor-sharp conchoidal edges.