Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Green Marble
A green ornamental stone, often serpentine-rich marble or verde antique, valued for its rich green color and white veining.
metamorphicLapis Lazuli
An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.
metamorphicArgillite
Hardened, fine-grained mudrock intermediate between shale and slate, dense and non-fissile, often carved into ornaments.
sedimentaryGarnierite
A vivid green hydrous nickel-magnesium silicate that is a major ore of nickel, mined from weathered ultramafic rocks.
mineralCrinoidal Limestone
A fossiliferous limestone built largely from the disc-shaped skeletal plates of crinoids, marine animals known as sea lilies.
sedimentaryKyanite Schist
A mica schist containing bladed blue kyanite crystals, a marker of medium- to high-grade metamorphism of aluminous rocks.
metamorphicGoldmanite
A green, vanadium-dominant garnet that forms in vanadium-rich metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, notably in uranium-vanadium districts.
mineralKokchetavite
A rare hexagonal polymorph of potassium feldspar discovered as microscopic inclusions in ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic rocks.
mineralEltyubyuite
A rare chlorine-bearing iron garnet-supergroup mineral, the ferric analogue of wadalite, formed in high-temperature combustion-metamorphic rocks.
mineralFeruvite
A calcium- and ferrous-iron-rich tourmaline, the iron analogue of uvite, forming dark brown to black crystals in skarns and metamorphic rocks.
mineralChrome-Dravite
A chromium-dominant tourmaline related to dravite, producing intensely deep green to blackish-green crystals from chromium-rich metamorphic rocks.
mineralGahnite
A hard zinc-rich member of the spinel group, usually dark blue-green to black, forming octahedral crystals in metamorphic and pegmatitic rocks.
mineralGranodiorite
A common coarse-grained intrusive rock like granite but richer in plagioclase than potassium feldspar.
igneousCharnockite
A granite-like rock containing orthopyroxene, formed at high temperatures and pressures and often classed with the granulites.
igneousOrbicular Granite
A rare granitic rock containing concentric, onion-like spheres called orbicules, prized as a striking ornamental stone.
igneousZebra Jasper
A black-and-white striped chalcedony-quartz rock whose bold zebra-like banding makes it a popular ornamental and lapidary stone.
sedimentaryPorcelanite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock with a dull porcelain-like texture, intermediate between soft diatomite and dense chert.
sedimentaryBauxite
An earthy aluminum-rich residual rock and the world's principal ore of aluminum, often showing distinctive pea-like pisolites.
sedimentaryFelsite
A general term for light-colored, fine-grained volcanic rocks rich in quartz and feldspar, like rhyolite.
igneousSchorlomite
A lustrous black titanium-rich garnet of the andradite series, found in alkaline igneous rocks like nepheline syenite and ijolite.
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