Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Tiger Iron

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

A brecciated, chatoyant quartz with swirling blue, gold, and brown fibers that shimmer like a stormy sky.

A mica schist studded with red-brown staurolite porphyroblasts, including the famous cross-shaped twins called fairy stones.

A pale translucent chalcedony threaded with brown-black manganese and iron dendrites that mimic tiny ferns, mosses or landscapes.

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

A fractured and re-cemented agate whose angular broken bands resemble crumbling walls and ruined cityscapes when polished.

A soft, lightweight siliceous sedimentary rock made of fossil diatom remains, prized as a fine natural abrasive and polishing powder.

A richly colored red banded agate prized by lapidaries for its deep crimson-to-brown tones reminiscent of pigeon's blood.

A pleochroic aluminum silicate that flashes green and reddish-brown from different angles, with a cross-marked variety called chiastolite.

The principal iron ore, a heavy iron oxide ranging from metallic silver-gray to earthy red, always leaving a tell-tale red-brown streak.

A translucent chalcedony filled with green or brown dendritic mineral inclusions that resemble moss, foliage, or landscapes.

A mica schist studded with brown staurolite porphyroblasts, sometimes forming the cross-shaped twins known as fairy stones.

A trade term for orange garnets, mainly manganese-rich spessartine and the brownish hessonite variety of grossular.

A common potassium feldspar identical in composition to orthoclase but more ordered, famous for its green gem variety amazonite.