Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Alabaster

A soft, fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum (or banded calcite) long prized as a carving and ornamental stone.

A dark, mineral-rich dike rock with abundant mica or amphibole phenocrysts set in a fine groundmass, often associated with gold and diamonds.

A coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock dominated by alkali feldspar with little or no quartz.

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

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