Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Tholeiitic Basalt

The most abundant basalt type on Earth, a silica-saturated subalkaline lava that forms ocean crust and flood basalts.

An exceptionally rare red variety of beryl colored by manganese, found chiefly in Utah and prized as one of the rarest gems.

One of the two jade minerals, an amphibole prized for its extreme toughness and soft, waxy green hues used in carving for millennia.

The calcium-aluminum garnet species spanning green tsavorite, cinnamon hessonite, and colorless leuco garnet — one of the most varied garnets.

The green chromium- and vanadium-colored variety of beryl, one of the four classic precious gemstones renowned for its rich green color.

Clear quartz mined in the Himalayan region, often double-terminated and containing dark hematite or carbon inclusions.

A rare sky-blue variety of pectolite found only in the Dominican Republic, prized for its sea-like color and white volcanic patterning.

A limestone packed with visible shells and shell fragments, recording the accumulation of marine invertebrate remains on ancient sea floors.