Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Merelani Mint Garnet
A delicate vanadium-colored mint-green grossular garnet from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania, the source of tanzanite.
gemstone
Bone Opal
Fossil bone in which opal has replaced the original tissue, sometimes showing play-of-color, a rare collector fossil.
gemstone
Crystal Opal
Precious opal with a transparent or translucent body, letting play-of-color glow with exceptional depth and clarity.
gemstoneMilk Opal
An opaque to translucent milky-white common opal valued for its soft porcelain-like color rather than play-of-color.
gemstone
Peacock Opal
A precious opal showing dominant peacock-like blue, green and teal play-of-color, often on Ethiopian material.
gemstone
Mandarin Garnet
The intensely glowing orange variety of spessartine garnet, prized for its pure 'Fanta-orange' fire and high brilliance.
gemstone
Oregon Sunstone
A copper-bearing labradorite feldspar from Oregon, famous for its range of natural colors and glittery aventurescent copper schiller.
gemstoneGrey Moonstone
A smoky gray feldspar moonstone, often called new moon stone, showing a silvery-blue adularescent sheen over a translucent gray body.
gemstone
Blue Sapphire
The blue gem variety of corundum, prized for its rich color, extreme hardness, and brilliance second only to diamond.
gemstone
Trapiche Tourmaline
A rare tourmaline showing a fixed wheel-like pattern of color zones and arms radiating from the crystal's center.
gemstoneTsilaisite
A manganese-dominant tourmaline, the source of bright yellow to greenish-yellow gem tourmaline, named for its Madagascar type locality.
mineral
Cat's Eye Tourmaline
Tourmaline displaying chatoyancy, a moving band of light caused by parallel tube-like inclusions, when cut as a cabochon.
gemstone
Water Opal
A transparent, colorless opal that looks like water or jelly, sometimes flashing subtle play-of-color from within.
gemstone
Bastnasite
A rare-earth fluorocarbonate that is one of the world's most important ores of cerium, lanthanum, and other rare earth elements.
mineral
Bismuthinite
A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.
mineralBird's Eye Jasper
A microcrystalline quartz jasper marked by small concentric ring or eye patterns that resemble the eyes of birds.
mineralGooseberry Garnet
Gooseberry Garnet is a soft green grossular garnet named for its resemblance to the pale, translucent green of ripe gooseberries.
gemstone
Snow Quartz
An opaque, snow-white variety of quartz whose milky color comes from countless tiny gas and fluid inclusions.
crystal
Uvite
A calcium-magnesium tourmaline that forms in metamorphosed limestones, typically dark green to brown and often in well-formed crystals.
mineral
Schorl
The common iron-rich black variety of tourmaline, by far the most abundant tourmaline species and a popular grounding crystal.
mineralLotus Garnet
A delicate pinkish-purple to peach garnet from Tanzania, a pyrope-spessartine blend named for the soft colors of a lotus flower.
gemstone
Dravite
The magnesium-rich brown member of the tourmaline group, named for Austria's Drava River and prized for warm earthy tones.
mineral
Goethite
Goethite is a common brown iron oxyhydroxide, the main crystalline component of limonite and rust, with shimmering botryoidal forms.
mineral
Hot Pink Tourmaline
An intensely saturated hot-pink to magenta elbaite tourmaline, among the most vivid and eye-catching of all pink rubellites.
gemstone