Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Chalk

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

A fine-grained volcanic rock dominated by alkali feldspar, the extrusive equivalent of syenite.

A fine-grained volcanic rock intermediate between andesite and rhyolite, common at explosive stratovolcanoes.

An extremely fine-grained, dense siliceous rock famous as Arkansas whetstone, prized for sharpening fine cutting tools.

The fine-grained volcanic equivalent of monzonite, an intermediate lava with nearly equal feldspars and little free quartz.

Dark, organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock formed in oxygen-poor waters, often a source rock for oil and gas.

A soft, fine-grained, porous white limestone made largely of microscopic calcareous plankton skeletons, the rock that forms classic white cliffs.

A metamorphic rock of calcium-rich silicate minerals formed from impure limestone or dolomite altered by heat and fluids.

A pale, silvery schist dominated by paragonite, the sodium-rich white mica, formed in aluminous metamorphic rocks.

A mica schist containing bladed blue kyanite crystals, a marker of medium- to high-grade metamorphism of aluminous rocks.

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

A high-grade metamorphic rock formed in the deep, hot crust, marked by anhydrous minerals like pyroxene and garnet.

A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.