Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Chalcopyrite
A brassy copper-iron sulfide that is the world's most important copper ore, often showing colorful iridescent tarnish.
mineral
Cherry Opal
A translucent red opal, closely related to Mexican fire opal, glowing with a warm cherry-red body color often free of play-of-color.
gemstoneCat's Eye Opal
An opal cut to show chatoyancy, a sharp moving band of light like a cat's eye, usually in honey, green or yellow common opal.
gemstone
Chalcocite
A dark gray copper sulfide that is one of the richest copper ores, prized by collectors when found as rare sharp crystals.
mineral
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
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
Guano
An accumulated deposit of bird or bat droppings rich in nitrogen and phosphate, historically a prized natural fertilizer.
sedimentary
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
Ilmenite
Ilmenite is the world's leading source of titanium, a heavy iron-black oxide common in mafic rocks and black sands.
mineral
Bismuthinite
A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.
mineralGooseberry Garnet
Gooseberry Garnet is a soft green grossular garnet named for its resemblance to the pale, translucent green of ripe gooseberries.
gemstone
Talc Schist
An extremely soft, soapy-feeling foliated rock made largely of talc, formed by metamorphism of magnesium-rich rocks.
metamorphic
Uvite
A calcium-magnesium tourmaline that forms in metamorphosed limestones, typically dark green to brown and often in well-formed crystals.
mineralLotus Garnet
A delicate pinkish-purple to peach garnet from Tanzania, a pyrope-spessartine blend named for the soft colors of a lotus flower.
gemstoneUrtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous