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's Eye
A golden-brown chatoyant quartz with a shimmering silky band of light, formed when quartz replaces fibrous crocidolite.
gemstone
Nordmarkite
A light-colored alkali quartz syenite dominated by perthitic feldspar with minor quartz, from the Oslo igneous province of Norway.
igneous
Peridotite
A dense, coarse-grained ultramafic rock rich in olivine that makes up most of the Earth's upper mantle.
igneous
Tonalite
A quartz-rich plutonic rock dominated by plagioclase feldspar with little alkali feldspar, closely related to granodiorite and quartz diorite.
igneous
Aventurine
A translucent quartz speckled with glittery mineral inclusions that produce a shimmering aventurescence, most often green.
crystal
Phosphorite
Phosphate-rich sedimentary rock, the world's main source of phosphorus for fertilizers, formed in nutrient-rich marine settings.
sedimentary
Sandstone
A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.
sedimentary
Urtite
A pale, nepheline-dominated plutonic rock at the leucocratic end of the ijolite series, sometimes associated with major apatite ore deposits.
igneous
Limestone
A soft carbonate sedimentary rock made mostly of calcite, often packed with marine fossils and prone to forming caves.
sedimentary
Dunite
An ultramafic intrusive rock made almost entirely of olivine, representing mantle material.
igneous
Albitite
A pale rock made almost entirely of the sodium feldspar albite, formed by sodic magmatism or sodium metasomatism.
igneous
Green Aventurine
A green quartz speckled with shimmering fuchsite mica that produces a glittering aventurescence, popular as an affordable ornamental stone.
mineral
Scoria
A dark, highly vesicular volcanic rock full of gas bubbles, denser than pumice, common as red or black lava rock.
igneous
Eulysite
A rare, dense iron-rich metamorphic rock composed of fayalite, iron pyroxene, and almandine garnet.
metamorphic
Breccia
A coarse rock of angular, sharp-edged fragments cemented in a matrix, marking nearby rockfall, faulting, or impact.
sedimentary
Coquina
A soft, porous limestone made of loosely cemented shell and coral fragments, used as a coastal building stone.
sedimentary
Pegmatite
An exceptionally coarse-grained igneous rock, often granitic, famous for hosting large crystals and many gemstones.
igneous
Melteigite
A dark, pyroxene-dominated plutonic rock at the mafic end of the ijolite series, made mainly of aegirine-augite with subordinate nepheline.
igneous
Ijolite
A coarse-grained, feldspar-free plutonic rock composed mainly of nepheline and sodic pyroxene, the intrusive equivalent of nephelinite.
igneous
Hornfels
A tough, fine-grained, non-foliated rock formed by the intense heat of nearby magma baking surrounding rock at contact zones.
metamorphic
Basalt
A fine-grained, dark volcanic rock that erupts as fluid lava and forms most of the ocean floor and many lava plateaus.
igneous
Prasiolite
A pale green variety of quartz, usually created by heat-treating amethyst, often marketed as green amethyst.
gemstone
Skarn
A calc-silicate rock formed by chemical exchange between magma and carbonate rock, often rich in garnet and economically important ore minerals.
metamorphic
Pisolite
A sedimentary rock built from pea-sized concentric spheres called pisoids, often carbonate but sometimes iron or aluminum-rich.
sedimentary