Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Breccia
A coarse rock of angular, sharp-edged fragments cemented in a matrix, marking nearby rockfall, faulting, or impact.
sedimentary
Tsavorite Garnet
A brilliant green grossular garnet colored by chromium and vanadium, rivaling emerald with superior brilliance and durability.
gemstone
Coquina
A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.
sedimentary
Eclogite
A dense, high-pressure metamorphic rock famous for its red garnets set in bright green pyroxene, formed deep within subduction zones.
metamorphic
Prehnite
A translucent yellow-green silicate famous for its botryoidal 'grape' clusters, often hosting needle-like sprays of black epidote.
mineralPrase
An old name for a dull leek-green variety of quartz or chalcedony colored by green mineral inclusions, historically called mother of emerald.
crystalAmegreen
A natural bicolor quartz blending amethyst purple with prasiolite green in a single crystal, prized as a metaphysical heart-crown stone.
crystal
Greensand
A green, glauconite-rich marine sandstone that records slow deposition on continental shelves and is used as a soil amendment.
sedimentary
Pegmatite
An exceptionally coarse-grained igneous rock, often granitic, famous for hosting large crystals and many gemstones.
igneous
Basalt
A fine-grained, dark volcanic rock that erupts as fluid lava and forms most of the ocean floor and many lava plateaus.
igneous
Hornfels
A tough, fine-grained, non-foliated rock formed by the intense heat of nearby magma baking surrounding rock at contact zones.
metamorphic
Melteigite
A dark, pyroxene-dominated plutonic rock at the mafic end of the ijolite series, made mainly of aegirine-augite with subordinate nepheline.
igneous
Chert
A hard, fine-grained sedimentary silica rock that breaks with sharp conchoidal edges, prized by ancient toolmakers.
sedimentary
Ijolite
A coarse-grained, feldspar-free plutonic rock composed mainly of nepheline and sodic pyroxene, the intrusive equivalent of nephelinite.
igneous
Malachite
A vivid green copper carbonate mineral famous for swirling concentric bands, used as an ore of copper and an ornamental gemstone.
mineralRainforest Jasper
An Australian green rhyolite with eye-like orbs and earthy patterns marketed as jasper, evoking dense rainforest foliage.
igneous
Diorite
A coarse-grained intrusive rock with a distinctive salt-and-pepper look, the plutonic equivalent of andesite.
igneous
Pisolite
A sedimentary rock built from pea-sized concentric spheres called pisoids, often carbonate but sometimes iron or aluminum-rich.
sedimentary
Skarn
A calc-silicate rock formed by chemical exchange between magma and carbonate rock, often rich in garnet and economically important ore minerals.
metamorphicMint Garnet
A delicate pastel-green grossular garnet, lighter than tsavorite, most famously from the Merelani Hills of Tanzania.
gemstone
Radiolarite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock built from the microscopic silica skeletons of radiolarians, often forming colorful ribbon-banded cherts.
sedimentary
Pyromorphite
A lead phosphate secondary mineral known for barrel-shaped green to yellow crystals formed in oxidized lead deposits.
mineral
Fenite
A metasomatic rock formed when alkali-rich fluids from carbonatite or alkaline intrusions transform surrounding country rock.
metamorphic
Quartzite
An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.
metamorphic