Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Flower Jasper
A jasper whose radiating mineral clusters form flower-like rosettes scattered across an earthy background.
mineral
Carnelian
A warm orange-to-red variety of chalcedony quartz colored by iron oxide, used since antiquity for seals, beads, and cabochons.
gemstoneSunset Agate
A warmly colored chalcedony agate with reds, oranges, golds, and pinks that blend like the glowing bands of a sunset sky.
gemstoneFeather Jasper
A jasper marked with soft feather- or plume-like mineral inclusions that drift through a pale silica body.
mineralFlame Jasper
A fiery jasper whose red, orange, and yellow plumes lick across the stone like flames against an earthy background.
mineral
Albitite
A pale rock made almost entirely of the sodium feldspar albite, formed by sodic magmatism or sodium metasomatism.
igneousBird's Eye Jasper
A microcrystalline quartz jasper marked by small concentric ring or eye patterns that resemble the eyes of birds.
mineral
Turritella Agate
A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.
sedimentaryUnakite Jasper
An altered granite of pink feldspar, green epidote and quartz, mottled pink-and-green and popular as a tumbled and carving stone.
metamorphic
Tube Agate
A chalcedony agate containing hollow or mineral-filled tubes that appear as rods, circles, or pipes depending on the angle of the cut.
gemstone
Feather Agate
A translucent chalcedony agate containing delicate, feather- or plume-shaped mineral inclusions that branch like soft feathers.
gemstone
Kimberlite
A rare ultramafic volcanic rock that erupts from deep in the mantle and is the primary natural source of diamonds.
igneousPigeon Blood Agate
A richly colored red banded agate prized by lapidaries for its deep crimson-to-brown tones reminiscent of pigeon's blood.
gemstone
Oil Shale
A fine-grained sedimentary rock rich in solid organic matter (kerogen) that yields oil and gas when heated.
sedimentary
Flame Agate
A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.
gemstoneFrost Agate
A pale chalcedony agate with cloudy, frost-like white patterning suggesting frost on a window or icy crystalline textures.
gemstone
Blue Jasper
An opaque blue variety of chalcedony jasper, less common than red or green forms, colored by mineral inclusions.
mineralUrtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous
Cathedral Agate
A banded agate whose internal structures resemble cathedral spires, arches, or a city skyline of towers and pinnacles.
gemstone
Paragonite Schist
A pale, silvery schist dominated by paragonite, the sodium-rich white mica, formed in aluminous metamorphic rocks.
metamorphic
Sweetwater Agate
A translucent Wyoming chalcedony filled with delicate black manganese dendrites that resemble tiny ferns, moss, or starbursts.
gemstone
Minette
A dark, mica-rich lamprophyre dike rock in which biotite and augite phenocrysts sit in a groundmass dominated by alkali feldspar.
igneous
Phosphorite
Phosphate-rich sedimentary rock, the world's main source of phosphorus for fertilizers, formed in nutrient-rich marine settings.
sedimentary
Bauxite
An earthy aluminum-rich residual rock and the world's principal ore of aluminum, often showing distinctive pea-like pisolites.
sedimentary