Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Cipollino Marble
A green-and-white banded metamorphic marble whose wavy mica layers resemble the rings of a sliced onion.
metamorphicPicasso Jasper
A marbled, abstractly patterned stone resembling modern art, technically a metamorphosed limestone rather than a true silica jasper.
metamorphic
Septarian Concretion
A rounded sedimentary nodule cracked internally and filled with veins of yellow calcite, prized for its striking dragon-skin patterning.
sedimentary
Calc-schist
A foliated metamorphic rock of calcite mixed with mica, quartz, and calc-silicate minerals, derived from marly sediments.
metamorphic
Carbonatite
A rare igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals, source of the world's most important rare-earth-element and niobium deposits.
igneous
Stibnite
Stibnite is the chief ore of antimony, famous for its dramatic clusters of bladed, silvery-gray metallic crystals.
mineral
Pegmatite
An exceptionally coarse-grained igneous rock, often granitic, famous for hosting large crystals and many gemstones.
igneous
Pineapple Opal
A rare opal pseudomorph from White Cliffs, Australia, formed as opal replaced clustered crystals into a pineapple-like shape.
gemstoneAppinite
A group of coarse, water-rich plutonic rocks dominated by large hornblende crystals set in feldspar, intermediate between lamprophyre and diorite.
igneous
Anorthoclase
A sodium-rich alkali feldspar of sodic volcanic rocks, sometimes forming large glassy crystals and the blue-flashing feldspar in larvikite.
mineral
Harlequin Opal
The rarest and most coveted opal play-of-color pattern, showing large, evenly spaced, angular mosaic patches of color.
gemstone
Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass packed with tiny copper crystals, traditionally reddish-brown but also made in blue and green.
crystalPaintbrush Agate
A plume agate whose inclusions form upright, bristly clusters resembling the strokes of a paintbrush.
gemstone
Strontium Feldspar
Feldspar in which strontium dominates the large cation site, represented mainly by the rare mineral slawsonite.
mineral
Grape Agate
Clusters of tiny botryoidal chalcedony spheres resembling bunches of grapes, famously purple, found in Indonesia.
mineral
Flower Jasper
A jasper whose radiating mineral clusters form flower-like rosettes scattered across an earthy background.
mineral
Devitrified Obsidian
Obsidian that has partly crystallized over time, growing pale spherulite clusters within the black glass, as in snowflake obsidian.
igneous
Prehnite
A translucent yellow-green silicate famous for its botryoidal 'grape' clusters, often hosting needle-like sprays of black epidote.
mineral
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentary
Adirondack Garnet
Adirondack Garnet is large, dark-red almandine from New York's Gore Mountain, the world's most famous industrial garnet abrasive source.
mineral
Calcarenite
Sand-grained limestone composed of carbonate particles such as shell fragments and ooids cemented into a calcite rock.
sedimentary
Siderite
Siderite is an iron carbonate ore, a brown rhombohedral mineral of the calcite group found in sediments and veins.
mineral
Maskelynite
A natural glass formed when plagioclase feldspar is transformed by shock pressure during meteorite impacts, preserving crystal shape but losing crystal structure.
mineral
Feruvite
A calcium- and ferrous-iron-rich tourmaline, the iron analogue of uvite, forming dark brown to black crystals in skarns and metamorphic rocks.
mineral