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.
mineralDragon 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.
metamorphicStarry Night Jasper
A dark jasper trade stone speckled with pale flecks resembling a starry night sky, valued for its cosmic appearance.
mineralOwyhee 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
A landscape-patterned Chinese jasper prized for warm cherry-red, cream, and green bands resembling painted scenery.
mineralWillow Creek Jasper
A prized Idaho jasper known for porcelain-smooth pastel pinks, creams, and greens in soft swirling, orbicular patterns.
mineral
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
An opaque jasper from the Cave Creek area of Arizona, prized for earthy mottled and banded patterns in warm desert tones.
mineralFrog Skin Jasper
A mottled green jasper whose blotchy spotting resembles frog skin, valued by lapidaries for its earthy, camouflage-like patterns.
gemstoneMustard Tourmaline
A warm mustard to brownish-yellow tourmaline, colored by iron or manganese, sitting between yellow and brown dravite tones.
gemstone
Limonite
Limonite is an amorphous brown iron oxide ore, the rust-colored material behind ochre pigments and bog iron.
mineral
Champagne Garnet
A soft brownish-golden garnet named for its champagne color, usually a malaia-type pyrope-spessartine blend prized for warm, neutral tones.
gemstone
Menilite Opal
An opaque grey-brown common opal forming nodules and concretions, historically called liver opal for its dull brownish color.
mineral
Honey Calcite
A warm golden-to-amber variety of calcite, a soft calcium carbonate mineral valued for its honeyed glow and easy carving.
mineralMocha Agate
A pale translucent chalcedony threaded with brown-black manganese and iron dendrites that mimic tiny ferns, mosses or landscapes.
gemstone
Apache Tears
Rounded nodules of translucent obsidian, named after a Native American legend, that glow smoky brown when held to light.
igneous
Mookaite
A vivid Australian jasper-like silica stone in earthy reds, yellows, and purples, formed from silicified radiolarian sediment.
mineral
Pyromorphite
A lead phosphate secondary mineral known for barrel-shaped green to yellow crystals formed in oxidized lead deposits.
mineral
Yellow Beryl
The yellow variety of beryl, also called heliodor or golden beryl, colored by iron and valued for its bright color and durability.
gemstone
Yellow Garnet
A trade term for yellow garnets, including golden grossular, yellow andradite (topazolite), and yellow-green Mali garnet.
gemstone
Brown Obsidian
Obsidian colored brown by iron oxide inclusions, frequently banded or swirled with black as in mahogany obsidian.
igneous
Turritella Agate
A brown fossiliferous chalcedony packed with spiral freshwater snail shells, technically agatized fossil rock from Wyoming.
sedimentary
Porcelanite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock with a dull porcelain-like texture, intermediate between soft diatomite and dense chert.
sedimentary
Radiolarite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock built from the microscopic silica skeletons of radiolarians, often forming colorful ribbon-banded cherts.
sedimentary