Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Green Calcite

A soft mint-to-apple-green variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral popular as soothing tumbled stones.

A soft, white, fine-grained limestone made almost entirely of microscopic marine plankton skeletons.

A sedimentary rock built from pea-sized concentric spheres called pisoids, often carbonate but sometimes iron or aluminum-rich.

A porous, spongy freshwater limestone that precipitates around springs, streams and lakes, often encrusting plants and moss.

A banded, porous limestone deposited by mineral springs, prized as a warm-toned natural building and tile stone.

Carbonate-cemented soil crust formed in arid regions where calcium carbonate accumulates and hardens within the regolith.

Extremely fine-grained, even-textured limestone famous for lithographic printing and for preserving exquisite fossils like Archaeopteryx.

Translucent banded calcium-carbonate stone deposited in caves and springs, prized for ornamental carvings despite its softness.

A metamorphosed limestone of interlocking calcite crystals, prized for sculpture and architecture for its workability and polish.

A chemical deposit precipitated around hot springs and geysers, either siliceous (geyserite) or calcareous, forming delicate terraces and crusts.

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

A rare igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals, source of the world's most important rare-earth-element and niobium deposits.

A soft sedimentary evaporite made of massive gypsum, deposited when sulfate-rich seawater or lake water evaporates and concentrates.

Siderite is an iron carbonate ore, a brown rhombohedral mineral of the calcite group found in sediments and veins.