Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Butterstone Jasper
A soft-toned cream-to-butterscotch jasper colored by iron oxides, prized by lapidaries for its smooth, even, opaque finish.
gemstone
Scepter Quartz
Quartz with a wider crystal 'cap' that grew over a narrower stem, forming a natural scepter or mushroom shape.
crystal
Mustard Jasper
A warm mustard-to-ochre yellow jasper colored by iron, valued by lapidaries for its rich, earthy golden tone.
gemstone
Molybdenite
Molybdenite is the primary ore of molybdenum, a soft, greasy, silver-gray sulfide that closely resembles graphite.
mineral
Garden Quartz
Clear quartz filled with mineral inclusions that look like underwater gardens, mossy landscapes, or floating scenery.
crystal
Tangerine Quartz
Clear quartz coated with orange-red hematite, giving points a vivid tangerine color, mainly from Brazil.
crystalCandle Quartz
A quartz with a main point surrounded by many smaller crystals along its sides, resembling melted candle wax, mainly from Madagascar.
crystal
Bronzite
An iron-rich orthopyroxene prized for its warm bronze schiller, a metallic-looking sheen created by tiny mineral inclusions.
mineral
Strawberry Quartz
A pink-to-red quartz colored by iron oxide inclusions that create a speckled, strawberry-like appearance within clear crystal.
crystal
Elestial Quartz
A quartz with a complex skeletal, layered surface of many terminations and etched recesses, also called skeletal or jacare quartz.
crystal
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystal
Rutilated Quartz
Clear or smoky quartz threaded with golden to reddish needles of rutile, also poetically called Venus hair stone.
crystal
Dumortierite Quartz
Quartz colored blue by inclusions of the mineral dumortierite, giving a denim-like blue ornamental stone harder than dumortierite alone.
gemstone
Cathedral Quartz
Quartz with a stepped, multi-pointed structure of parallel side crystals resembling the spires of a cathedral.
crystal
Pyrrhotite
A bronze-colored iron sulfide notable for being the most magnetic of the common sulfide minerals and an important nickel host.
mineral
Tourmalinated Quartz
Clear or milky quartz threaded with black needles of tourmaline (schorl), combining quartz clarity with dramatic dark inclusions.
crystal
Chrysoprase
A translucent apple-green chalcedony colored by nickel, the most prized green variety of the quartz family.
gemstone
Sperrylite
A rare platinum arsenide and the most important platinum-bearing mineral, forming bright metallic cubic crystals.
mineral
Thulite
A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.
gemstone
Sphalerite
Zinc sulfide and the chief ore of zinc, prized when transparent for its extreme fire that exceeds diamond.
mineral
Patronite
A rare greenish-black vanadium sulfide that was historically one of the world's most important ores of vanadium.
mineralCopper
A soft, reddish native metal with excellent conductivity, mined for wiring, plumbing, and alloys like bronze and brass.
mineral
Pelitic Schist
A schist derived from clay-rich sediments, rich in mica and often bearing index minerals like garnet, staurolite, or kyanite.
metamorphic
Cinnabar
A bright red mercury sulfide, the chief ore of mercury and the historic source of the pigment vermilion.
mineral