Rock Identifier

Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Red Tourmaline

Red Tourmaline

Vivid red to raspberry tourmaline, the most intense colors are marketed as rubellite, colored by manganese in the elbaite structure.

gemstone
Pastel Tourmaline

Pastel Tourmaline

A trade name for lightly saturated elbaite tourmalines in delicate pastel pinks, mints, peaches, and blues popular in modern jewelry.

gemstone
Danburite

Danburite

A glassy calcium borosilicate forming wedge-tipped prismatic crystals, usually colorless to pale yellow or pink, sometimes faceted as a gem.

crystal
Rossmanite

Rossmanite

A rare lithium-aluminum tourmaline with a vacant X site, typically pale pink to colorless and found in lithium pegmatites.

mineral
Apricot Tourmaline

Apricot Tourmaline

A warm apricot to peachy orange-pink elbaite tourmaline colored mainly by manganese, prized for its soft, glowing warmth.

gemstone
Umbalite Garnet

Umbalite Garnet

A delicate pink to lavender garnet from Tanzania's Umba Valley, a pyrope-spessartine blend often marketed as a soft, light-toned rhodolite.

gemstone
Pezzottaite

Pezzottaite

A rare cesium-rich, beryl-related gem mineral with a raspberry-pink color, first found in Madagascar in 2002.

gemstone
Madagascar Opal

Madagascar Opal

Opal from Madagascar spanning colorful common opal and some precious opal, including pink, green and boulder-type material.

gemstone
Star Rose Quartz

Star Rose Quartz

Rose quartz that displays a six-rayed star (asterism) when cut as a cabochon, caused by microscopic rutile-like inclusions.

gemstone
Peach Moonstone

Peach Moonstone

A warm peach-to-apricot variety of moonstone feldspar showing a soft billowy sheen (adularescence) caused by internal light scattering.

gemstone
Lithium Quartz

Lithium Quartz

A quartz crystal containing pink to lilac lithium-bearing mineral inclusions that give a soft cloudy lavender or rose coloration.

crystal
Feldspathic Sandstone

Feldspathic Sandstone

A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.

sedimentary
Majorite

Majorite

An ultra-high-pressure garnet with silicon in the octahedral site, formed in the deep mantle transition zone and in shocked meteorites.

mineral
Metasandstone

Metasandstone

Sandstone altered by metamorphism, with partly recrystallized quartz grains, transitional between true sandstone and quartzite.

metamorphic
Quartzite Sandstone

Quartzite Sandstone

A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.

sedimentary
Wolframite

Wolframite

Wolframite is the historic principal ore of tungsten, a heavy black tungstate forming bladed crystals in granite veins.

mineral
Rhodochrosite

Rhodochrosite

Rhodochrosite is a rose-pink manganese carbonate prized for raspberry-red crystals and banded pink-and-white gem material.

gemstone
Rhyolite

Rhyolite

A fine-grained, silica-rich volcanic rock that is the extrusive equivalent of granite, often pale, banded, or flow-textured.

igneous
Feldspar

Feldspar

The most abundant mineral group in Earth's crust, feldspars are aluminosilicates that form much of granite and many igneous rocks.

mineral
Cleavelandite

Cleavelandite

A striking platy, blade-like variety of albite feldspar that grows in fanned aggregates of thin white crystals within granite pegmatites.

mineral
Orthoclase

Orthoclase

A common rock-forming potassium feldspar, the Mohs hardness reference at 6, found in granites and used in ceramics and glassmaking.

mineral
Rubicline

Rubicline

An extremely rare rubidium-dominant alkali feldspar, the rubidium analogue of microcline, found in rare-element granitic pegmatites.

mineral
Snake Skin Agate

Snake Skin Agate

A chalcedony with a distinctive scaly, reptile-skin surface texture, typically in pale tan, pink, and gray tones.

gemstone
Smithsonite

Smithsonite

Smithsonite is a zinc carbonate ore famous for glassy botryoidal crusts in blue-green, pink, and yellow hues.

mineral