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.

Sea Sediment Jasper

A colorful trade-name material, often dyed and reconstituted, sold as jasper; vivid blues and greens are typically artificially enhanced.

mineral

Dragon Blood Jasper

A green-and-red ornamental stone of epidote and red piemontite or iron oxide, named for its dragon-skin coloring; not a true jasper.

metamorphic

Starry Night Jasper

A dark jasper trade stone speckled with pale flecks resembling a starry night sky, valued for its cosmic appearance.

mineral

Owyhee Blue Jasper

A soft blue-gray jasper from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its rare, calming blue tones among earthy jaspers.

gemstone
Cherry Creek Jasper

Cherry Creek Jasper

A landscape-patterned Chinese jasper prized for warm cherry-red, cream, and green bands resembling painted scenery.

mineral

Willow Creek Jasper

A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.

mineral
Leopard Skin Jasper

Leopard Skin Jasper

A spotted jasper-rhyolite patterned with leopard-like rings and ovals, valued as an earthy ornamental and lapidary stone.

sedimentary
Cave Creek Jasper

Cave Creek Jasper

An opaque jasper from the Cave Creek area of Arizona, prized for earthy mottled and banded patterns in warm desert tones.

mineral

Frog Skin Jasper

A mottled green jasper whose blotchy spotting resembles frog skin, valued by lapidaries for its earthy, camouflage-like patterns.

gemstone
Honey Garnet

Honey Garnet

A warm golden-brown garnet named for its honey color, typically a hessonite grossular variety with a distinctive treacly internal texture.

gemstone
Sherry Tourmaline

Sherry Tourmaline

A warm sherry-brown to orange-brown tourmaline, usually magnesium-rich dravite, named for its rich fortified-wine color.

gemstone
Pumpkin Obsidian

Pumpkin Obsidian

An orange-to-rust colored variety of natural volcanic glass whose warm tone comes from iron oxide staining within the obsidian.

igneous
Menilite Opal

Menilite Opal

An opaque grey-brown common opal forming nodules and concretions, historically called liver opal for its dull brownish color.

mineral

Mocha Agate

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

gemstone
Apache Tears

Apache Tears

Rounded nodules of translucent obsidian, named after a Native American legend, that glow smoky brown when held to light.

igneous
Cinnamon Stone

Cinnamon Stone

The warm cinnamon-to-honey-brown variety of grossular garnet, also known as hessonite, with a characteristic swirly internal texture.

gemstone
Orange Garnet

Orange Garnet

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

gemstone
Turritella Agate

Turritella Agate

A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.

sedimentary

Pigeon Blood Agate

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

gemstone
Conglomerate

Conglomerate

A coarse sedimentary rock of rounded pebbles and gravel cemented in a finer matrix, recording ancient rivers and beaches.

sedimentary
Metaconglomerate

Metaconglomerate

A conglomerate altered by heat and pressure, often with its rounded pebbles stretched and flattened into elongated lenses.

metamorphic

Lake Huron Agate

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

gemstone
Mookaite

Mookaite

A vivid Australian jasper-like silica stone in earthy reds, yellows, and purples, formed from silicified radiolarian sediment.

mineral
Jaspillite

Jaspillite

A banded, metamorphosed iron formation in which bright red jasper alternates with silvery hematite or magnetite layers.

metamorphic