Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Rhyolite

A fine-grained, silica-rich volcanic rock that is the extrusive equivalent of granite, often pale, banded, or flow-textured.

A glittery, strongly foliated rock made mostly of aligned mica flakes that split into thin, shiny sheets.

A fine-grained volcanic rock dominated by alkali feldspar, the extrusive equivalent of syenite.

An Australian green rhyolite with eye-like orbs and earthy patterns marketed as jasper, evoking dense rainforest foliage.

A hard, dark, poorly sorted sandstone with a muddy matrix, typically deposited by underwater turbidity currents.

A foliated metamorphic rock dominated by quartz with enough mica to give it a schistose, splitting fabric.

A banded, metamorphosed iron formation in which bright red jasper alternates with silvery hematite or magnetite layers.

Ancient chemically deposited rock of alternating iron-oxide and silica bands recording Earth's early oxygenation and a major iron ore source.

A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.

A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.

A hard zinc-rich member of the spinel group, usually dark blue-green to black, forming octahedral crystals in metamorphic and pegmatitic rocks.