Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Uvarovite Garnet
The rare calcium-chromium garnet, famous for its sparkling emerald-green druzy crusts of tiny crystals, the only consistently green garnet.
mineral
Demantoid Garnet
A rare green andradite garnet famed for fire exceeding diamond and distinctive horsetail inclusions in Russian stones.
gemstoneBekily Garnet
A rare color-change garnet from Bekily, Madagascar, shifting from bluish-green in daylight to purplish-red under warm light, including the famed blue garnets.
gemstone
Color Change Garnet
A rare garnet that dramatically shifts color from greenish in daylight to reddish under lamplight, rivaling alexandrite.
gemstone
Merelani Mint Garnet
A delicate vanadium-colored mint-green grossular garnet from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania, the source of tanzanite.
gemstone
Yttrium Aluminum Garnet
A synthetic garnet-structured oxide (YAG) used as a diamond simulant and laser crystal, with no natural counterpart.
gemstone
Idaho Star Garnet
Idaho's official state gem: a dark almandine garnet showing a four- or rare six-rayed star from oriented rutile inclusions.
gemstoneMasasi Blue Garnet
Masasi Blue Garnet is a rare vanadium-bearing color-change garnet from Tanzania that appears blue-green by day and purplish-red indoors.
gemstone
Ant Hill Garnet
Small, bright chrome-pyrope garnets famously brought to the surface by harvester ants on the Navajo lands of Arizona.
gemstone
Khondalite
A high-grade metamorphic gneiss of garnet, sillimanite, quartz, and graphite, derived from ancient aluminous sediments.
metamorphic
Greenschist
A green, foliated low-grade metamorphic rock colored by chlorite, actinolite, and epidote, marking the greenschist metamorphic facies.
metamorphic
Amphibolite
A dark, dense metamorphic rock dominated by hornblende and plagioclase, formed by medium- to high-grade metamorphism of basalt.
metamorphic
Blueschist
A blue-hued, high-pressure metamorphic schist colored by the amphibole glaucophane, formed in cold, deep subduction zones.
metamorphic
Honduran Opal
Precious opal from Honduras occurring in a dark volcanic matrix, where bright flecks of color flash against a natural black basalt background.
gemstoneWhiteschist
A rare high-pressure metamorphic schist defined by the diagnostic assemblage of talc plus kyanite, often pale and silvery.
metamorphic
Granulite
A high-grade metamorphic rock formed in the deep, hot crust, marked by anhydrous minerals like pyroxene and garnet.
metamorphic
Calc-Silicate Rock
A metamorphic rock of calcium-rich silicate minerals formed from impure limestone or dolomite altered by heat and fluids.
metamorphic
Mylonite
A fine-grained, strongly foliated rock formed deep in fault zones where rocks flowed and ground down rather than fracturing.
metamorphic
Boulder Opal
Precious opal that forms in thin veins within brown ironstone boulders, cut with the host rock left as a natural dark backing.
gemstone
Andamooka Opal
Precious opal from the Andamooka field of South Australia, famous for solid crystal opal and its distinctive treatable matrix opal.
gemstone
Migmatite
A 'mixed rock' showing swirling light and dark bands, formed where high-grade metamorphism causes rock to begin partially melting.
metamorphic
Metaconglomerate
A conglomerate altered by heat and pressure, often with its rounded pebbles stretched and flattened into elongated lenses.
metamorphic
Fenite
A metasomatic rock formed when alkali-rich fluids from carbonatite or alkaline intrusions transform surrounding country rock.
metamorphic
Majorite
An ultra-high-pressure garnet with silicon in the octahedral site, formed in the deep mantle transition zone and in shocked meteorites.
mineral