Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Golden Healer Quartz
Quartz colored or coated by golden iron oxides such as limonite or goethite, giving a warm sunlit yellow glow.
crystalLemurian Seed Quartz
Clear quartz crystals marked by distinctive horizontal ladder-like striations, popularized from Brazil as a metaphysical stone.
crystal
Greenschist
A green, foliated low-grade metamorphic rock colored by chlorite, actinolite, and epidote, marking the greenschist metamorphic facies.
metamorphic
Blueschist
A blue-hued, high-pressure metamorphic schist colored by the amphibole glaucophane, formed in cold, deep subduction zones.
metamorphic
Minette
A dark, mica-rich lamprophyre dike rock in which biotite and augite phenocrysts sit in a groundmass dominated by alkali feldspar.
igneous
Brandberg Amethyst
A prized Namibian quartz combining amethyst, smoky, and clear quartz in single crystals, often with phantoms and enhydros.
crystal
Alnöite
A rare dark ultramafic lamprophyre rich in melilite, biotite and olivine, named for Alnö Island in Sweden.
igneous
Granite
A coarse-grained, speckled intrusive rock built from quartz, feldspar, and mica, forming the bedrock of the continents.
igneous
Bixbite
An old trade name for red beryl, the extremely rare manganese-colored beryl from Utah, now largely replaced by the term red beryl.
gemstone
Mariposite
A green, gold-associated metamorphic rock made of chrome-rich mica and quartz, named for Mariposa County in California's gold country.
metamorphicWhiteschist
A rare high-pressure metamorphic schist defined by the diagnostic assemblage of talc plus kyanite, often pale and silvery.
metamorphic
Kersantite
A dark mica lamprophyre with biotite and augite phenocrysts in a plagioclase-dominated groundmass, the feldspar counterpart of minette.
igneous
Mica
A family of sheet silicate minerals that split into thin, flexible, shiny sheets, giving rocks a sparkling, layered appearance.
mineral
Hornfels
A tough, fine-grained, non-foliated rock formed by the intense heat of nearby magma baking surrounding rock at contact zones.
metamorphic
Phyllite
A fine-grained foliated metamorphic rock between slate and schist, recognized by its silky silvery sheen and wavy, crinkled surfaces.
metamorphic
Clear Obsidian
An unusually pure, transparent-to-translucent obsidian with few inclusions; truly water-clear specimens are rare in nature.
igneous
Itabirite
A metamorphosed banded iron formation of alternating quartz and iron-oxide layers, mined as a major iron ore.
metamorphicCloudy Obsidian
Obsidian with a hazy, cloud-like translucency caused by uneven distribution of tiny bubbles or incipient crystallites in the glass.
igneous
Amphibolite
A dark, dense metamorphic rock dominated by hornblende and plagioclase, formed by medium- to high-grade metamorphism of basalt.
metamorphicGrey Moonstone
A smoky gray feldspar moonstone, often called new moon stone, showing a silvery-blue adularescent sheen over a translucent gray body.
gemstone
Gray Obsidian
Obsidian in gray tones, often semi-translucent, colored by light scattering and minor inclusions within the volcanic glass.
igneous
Brown Obsidian
Obsidian colored brown by iron oxide inclusions, frequently banded or swirled with black as in mahogany obsidian.
igneous
Metarhyolite
Rhyolite that has been metamorphosed, recrystallizing its silica-rich volcanic material into a tougher felsic metamorphic rock.
metamorphic
Black Moonstone
A dark gray-to-black feldspar variety of moonstone that shows blue and white adularescent flash against a smoky body.
gemstone