Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Majorite

An ultra-high-pressure garnet with silicon in the octahedral site, formed in the deep mantle transition zone and in shocked meteorites.

A black metallic manganese iron oxide famous for sharp cubic crystals, classically found with red beryl and topaz in Utah rhyolite.

A variety of pyroxenite composed of both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene with little olivine, found in layered intrusions and the mantle.

A zirconium-rich garnet related to kimzeyite, formed in carbonatites and skarns, named after the Kerimasi volcano in Tanzania.

A conglomerate altered by heat and pressure, often with its rounded pebbles stretched and flattened into elongated lenses.

A transparent to translucent opal prized for its glowing orange-to-red body color, mined chiefly in the volcanic highlands of Mexico.

A rare ferric-iron-dominant tourmaline that forms in oxidized evaporite settings, appearing as black to red-brown prismatic crystals.

A black volcanic glass that displays shifting rainbow or metallic sheen from microscopic nanoparticle layers trapped inside.

A transparent, optical-grade variety of calcite famous for strong double refraction, splitting images and light into two rays.

A chromium-rich magnesium garnet of the pyrope series that crystallizes in the deep mantle and is a valuable diamond indicator mineral.

A contact-metasomatic calc-silicate rock, essentially a skarn, formed where intrusions react with carbonate rocks and often host ore.

Small, intensely red chrome-pyrope garnets from the Czech Bohemian region, famous for densely set antique Victorian jewelry.

Black volcanic glass displaying a silvery shimmer from light reflecting off aligned microscopic gas bubbles trapped in the obsidian.