Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Bloodstone

A dark green chalcedony speckled with blood-red spots of iron oxide, traditionally known as heliotrope.

Obsidian colored orange by iron oxide inclusions; vivid uniform orange material is frequently manufactured glass rather than volcanic.

A soft, glowing orange variety of calcite colored by iron oxides, popular as tumbled stones and known for fizzing in acid.

A red-toned banded chalcedony colored by iron oxides, ranging from natural carnelian-like reds to heat-treated stones.

A vivid yellow-and-black banded stone from Indonesian volcanic vents, colored by sulfur, arsenic minerals and iron oxides, not true jasper.

A foliated metamorphic rock dominated by quartz with enough mica to give it a schistose, splitting fabric.

A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.

Precious opal that forms in thin veins within brown ironstone boulders, cut with the host rock left as a natural dark backing.