Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Canary Tourmaline
The vivid, pure yellow tourmaline marketed as canary, a rare manganese-rich variety from Zambia and Malawi.
gemstone
Jadeite
The rarer and more valuable of the two jade minerals, prized for its translucent emerald-green 'imperial' color and extreme toughness.
gemstone
Black Opal
The rarest and most valuable opal, with a dark body tone that makes its flashing rainbow play-of-color blaze brilliantly.
gemstone
Copper-Bearing Tourmaline
Tourmaline colored by copper, producing the famous vivid neon blues, greens and teals known commercially as Paraiba-type gems.
gemstone
Diamond
The hardest known natural material, a crystalline form of pure carbon prized as the ultimate gemstone for its brilliance and fire.
gemstone
Zircon
A natural zirconium silicate gem with high brilliance and fire, often confused with the synthetic imitation cubic zirconia.
gemstoneMacusanite
A rare translucent yellow-green volcanic glass from the Macusani region of Peru, valued by faceters and sometimes confused with tektites.
igneous
Rock Salt
An evaporite rock of the mineral halite (sodium chloride), the source of common salt, with a distinctive salty taste.
sedimentary
Hot Pink Tourmaline
An intensely saturated hot-pink to magenta elbaite tourmaline, among the most vivid and eye-catching of all pink rubellites.
gemstone
Sapphire
The gem variety of corundum in every color except red, most prized in velvety blue and exceptionally hard and durable.
gemstone
Tinguaite
A fine-grained green phonolitic dike rock rich in nepheline and aegirine, the hypabyssal equivalent of phonolite.
igneous
Precious Opal
The classic gem opal that flashes shifting spectral colors, defined by the diffraction effect known as play-of-color.
gemstone
Albitite
A pale rock made almost entirely of the sodium feldspar albite, formed by sodic magmatism or sodium metasomatism.
igneous
Shonkinite
A dark, mafic potassic alkaline rock rich in augite with alkali feldspar and often nepheline, classically forming the base of layered sills.
igneousUrtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous
Amethyst
The purple variety of quartz, colored by iron and natural irradiation, prized as the classic violet birthstone of February.
crystal
Limonite
Limonite is an amorphous brown iron oxide ore, the rust-colored material behind ochre pigments and bog iron.
mineral
Andamooka Opal
Precious opal from the Andamooka field of South Australia, famous for solid crystal opal and its distinctive treatable matrix opal.
gemstone
Ijolite
A coarse-grained, feldspar-free plutonic rock composed mainly of nepheline and sodic pyroxene, the intrusive equivalent of nephelinite.
igneous
Lujavrite
A dark, layered agpaitic nepheline syenite rich in sodic pyroxene and amphibole with eudialyte, from the Lovozero and Ilimaussaq complexes.
igneousGreen Jade
The classic green ornamental gem, either jadeite or nephrite, valued for millennia for its toughness and rich color, especially imperial green.
gemstone
Reedmergnerite
A rare boron-bearing feldspar, the boron analogue of albite, first found in oil-shale nodules of the Green River Formation.
mineral
Emerald Crystal
The natural crystalline form of emerald, the prized green chromium-and-vanadium variety of beryl and the May birthstone.
crystalBanalsite
A rare barium-sodium aluminosilicate of the feldspar group, found chiefly in metamorphosed manganese ore deposits.
mineral