Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Schist
A medium-grade metamorphic rock rich in aligned platy minerals that gives it a shiny, easily splitting, foliated texture.
metamorphicSlate
A fine-grained, low-grade metamorphic rock that splits into flat sheets along slaty cleavage, long used for roofing and flooring.
metamorphic
Anthracite
The highest-rank coal, a hard, lustrous black rock that burns cleanly with little smoke and high heat output.
metamorphicGondite
A metamorphic rock made chiefly of manganese-rich spessartine garnet and quartz, formed from ancient manganese-bearing sediments.
metamorphic
Metaquartzite
A hard, tough metamorphic rock of fused quartz grains, formed by recrystallizing quartz sandstone under heat and pressure.
metamorphic
Amphibolite
A dark, dense metamorphic rock dominated by hornblende and plagioclase, formed by medium- to high-grade metamorphism of basalt.
metamorphic
Verdite
A rich green, fuchsite-rich metamorphic rock from southern Africa, prized as a carving and ornamental stone.
metamorphic
Ironstone
An iron-rich sedimentary rock, often heavy and rusty-weathering, historically mined as a major source of iron ore.
sedimentary
Mariposite
A green, gold-associated metamorphic rock made of chrome-rich mica and quartz, named for Mariposa County in California's gold country.
metamorphic
Greenschist
A green, foliated low-grade metamorphic rock colored by chlorite, actinolite, and epidote, marking the greenschist metamorphic facies.
metamorphic
Mica Schist
A glittery, strongly foliated rock made mostly of aligned mica flakes that split into thin, shiny sheets.
metamorphic
Anorthosite
An intrusive igneous rock made almost entirely of plagioclase feldspar, famous as the rock of the lunar highlands.
igneous
Quartzite
An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.
metamorphic
Cataclasite
A cohesive fault rock formed by brittle crushing and grinding of rock along a fault zone, with angular fragments in a fine matrix.
metamorphic
Soapstone
A soft, talc-rich metamorphic rock with a soapy feel, easily carved and highly heat-resistant for cookware and sculpture.
metamorphic
Peridotite
A dense, coarse-grained ultramafic rock rich in olivine that makes up most of the Earth's upper mantle.
igneous
Blueschist
A blue-hued, high-pressure metamorphic schist colored by the amphibole glaucophane, formed in cold, deep subduction zones.
metamorphic
Phosphorite
Phosphate-rich sedimentary rock, the world's main source of phosphorus for fertilizers, formed in nutrient-rich marine settings.
sedimentary
Eclogite
A dense, high-pressure metamorphic rock famous for its red garnets set in bright green pyroxene, formed deep within subduction zones.
metamorphic
Dunite
An ultramafic intrusive rock made almost entirely of olivine, representing mantle material.
igneous
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentaryUrtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous
Albitite
A pale rock made almost entirely of the sodium feldspar albite, formed by sodic magmatism or sodium metasomatism.
igneous
Breccia
A coarse rock of angular, sharp-edged fragments cemented in a matrix, marking nearby rockfall, faulting, or impact.
sedimentary