Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Flame Jasper

A fiery jasper whose red, orange, and yellow plumes lick across the stone like flames against an earthy background.

A man-made glittering glass packed with tiny copper crystals, traditionally reddish-brown but also made in blue and green.

An opaque patterned jasper named for its scaly, snakeskin-like surface markings of interlocking tan and brown cells.

A nickel sulfide famous for delicate brass-yellow hairlike crystals that form radiating sprays inside cavities and geodes.

A banded combination rock of golden tiger's eye, red jasper, and metallic hematite, formed in ancient iron deposits.

A magnesium carbonate mineral, usually chalky white with grey veining, widely dyed to imitate turquoise and other stones.

A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.

A silver sulfide that is one of the most important silver ore minerals, forming dark metallic crystals and wires.

A rare platinum arsenide and the most important platinum-bearing mineral, forming bright metallic cubic crystals.

The brassy iron sulfide mineral famous as 'fool's gold,' known for sharp metallic cubes and a much higher hardness than real gold.

A soft copper sulfide famous for its intense indigo-blue color and dazzling iridescent metallic sheen, prized by collectors.

A heavy, lead-grey metallic mineral with perfect cubic cleavage, galena is the world's main ore of lead and often carries silver.

A silver-white cobalt arsenic sulfide that is a leading ore of cobalt, forming bright metallic cubic and pyritohedral crystals.

A black metallic manganese iron oxide famous for sharp cubic crystals, classically found with red beryl and topaz in Utah rhyolite.